Presentation about sustainable development B101 By Gareth Raymond Presentation about sustainable development B101

Topics I am going to cover What is solar energy? The Article What are Google doing? What have they done already? What are Google’s aims? What's happening around the world Competition between organisations

What is Solar Energy? Solar energy has been used for many years to do things such as drying clothing but only in the last few years have we discovered ways to fully harness the suns power.

Why use Solar Power? Solar energy is essentially free once you have purchased the equipment. The sun is usually always available especially in hot countries. Solar power creates very little green house gases compared to traditional methods like fossil fuels.

Comparison of Energy Sources This table shows the difference between some popular energy sources. As you can see solar energy can sometimes be unpredictable and because of the price of equipment is still the most expensive. However as the price of the equipment is becoming cheaper and because of the other benefits listed in the table solar energy is becoming a front runner in the energy race. Retrieved from: http://www.renewable-energy-sources.com/2008/11/28/comparison-of-energy-sources/

Article & Topic The following presentation will focus mainly on the article “The Greening of Google” Upson,S (2007). The Greening of Google. Retrieved from: http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/environment/the-greening-of-google

Google Google are attempting to become a “Greener” organisation the most recent and major step they have taken is to install solar panel onto there roofs.

Google Google have installed over 9000 solar panels onto the roof of there headquarters in north America and are hoping to generate enough energy to cover 30% of there buildings peak demand

Energy On an average day the 9212 solar panels which are constructed out of polysilicon can generate 9000 kilowatt hours of electricity a day.

Aims By the end of the year Google hopes that panels will produce 1.6 megawatts of electricity which will be enough to power 1000 Californian homes.

Worldwide progress Even though the project at Google is large its still not big enough to seat it within the top ten roof-mounted solar projects worldwide Solar panel installation have increased by 40% in the US however in Spain installation of photovoltaics have increased by 100% and Germany also still has more photovoltaics than the US

Competition There is currently a race taking place in America between organisations trying for the largest solar power installation Google currently have 1.6MW but Tesco’s are planning a project which will bring there total to 2MW and retail giants Wal-Mart are planning a massive installation which will produce over 5.6MW

Conclusion I conclude that solar energy is going to become more popular as the materials needed to produce solar panels such as silicon become more readily available. Competition between companies is only going to increase the amount of solar energy projects.

Referencing Upson,S (2007). The Greening of Google. Retrieved from: http://spectrum.ieee.org/energy/environment/the-greening-of-google Unknown Author (2007). Solar power - energy from the Sun. Retrieved from: http://www.darvill.clara.net/altenerg/solar.htm