1. Solar Power Bailey Baker; Tim Frykoda; Strathclair Community School Solar energy is energy that comes from the sun and is captured by solar panels. Solar Cells change light energy into electrical energy which we use to charge batteries. In a crystal, the bonds [between silicon atoms] are made of electrons that are shared between all of the atoms of the crystal. The light gets absorbed, and one of the electrons that's in one of the bonds gets excited up to a higher energy level and can move around more freely than when it was bound. That electron can then move around the crystal freely, and we can get a current. The cells can be arraigned to run anything from your calculator to your entire house. 174 petawatts of the suns radiation is received by the earth but about 30% of that is reflected into space. What is solar power I think solar power is a very useful kind of energy because the sun will continue to produce clean free energy for many years to come. Solar power is new and not very efficient at the time being but if we take the time to improve solar energy it could provide the world with clean and very cheap electricity. We have the technology to improve solar energy we just need to take the time to improve them even further than they already have. Conclusion There are many advantages to using solar energy one of the biggest advantages is it is a clean free source of energy. Another huge advantage is it is renewable the sun will continue to produce light energy for millions of years and no amount of solar panels are going to affect that. Solar panels give of no pollution and last for many years. Solar panels don’t have to be connected to the grid they even work in space (satellite panels). And they can be installed on roof tops so they don’t take up any space. They can also be installed in areas that aren’t hooked up to the grid. Solar panels are expensive because of the materials used, they can cost around $1,000. Since solar panels need light to produce electricity they won't work at night or on cloudy days. Solar electricity is a new resources so we aren’t able to harness very much of the suns energy at once. Advantages/Disadvantages Figure 2. Pie chart of energy investment. Improving 1.http://www.need.org/needpdf/infobook_activities/PriInfo/SolarP.pdfhttp://www.need.org/needpdf/infobook_activities/PriInfo/SolarP.pdf 2.http://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=solar_homehttp://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=solar_home 3.http://news.yale.edu/2013/02/13/new-carbon-films-improve-prospects- solar-energy-deviceshttp://news.yale.edu/2013/02/13/new-carbon-films-improve-prospects- solar-energy-devices 4.http://www.engineeringchallenges.org/cms/8996/9082.aspxhttp://www.engineeringchallenges.org/cms/8996/9082.aspx REFERENCES Figure 3. Shows the decrease in the price of solar energy. Figure 1. The process of creating solar energy. Table 1. How a solar panel works. There are many ways that we can improve solar panels for example people are using mirrors to reflect the suns rays towards the solar panels. A major way to make solar panels more efficient is to improve the crystalline silicon solar cells by applying thin, smooth carbon nanotube films. These films could be used to produce hybrid carbon/silicon solar cells with far greater power- conversion efficiency. We can also make solar panels thinner to reduce the distance the energy has to travel but the one downfall is that this reduces the amount of energy that the solar panel can absorber. A way to counter act this is to make the panels long but skinny so they can still absorb lots of energy but the energy has less distance to travel.