Good The Trend Of Sustainable Energy Technologies: Photo Voltaics Research Paper Example

Scientific estimations on time frame for depletion of fossil fuel are about 75 years as per the projections from current consumption trends. This statistics also reveals a shocking realization that the world is likely to lose close to 80.6% of its energy source with that occurrence, the world would be dark again and wars over struggle of the few remaining reserves would escalate. The scientists have now less than 50 years to change the trend through discovery of new renewable sources for example a technology to harness dark matter energy from collision of particles in an atomic scale and other sources or through improvement of harnessing methods from the existing sources (Solanski, 2009).
Solar energy is our next energy hero as it might reverse this trend if properly utilized at an affordable scale. Solar energy is one of the reliable renewable sources found in abundance in nature. This vast energy source is harnessed using specialized solar cells designed to collect the intensity of solar light and convert it into electric energy that can be used direct in powering various systems or stored in battery cells for future use also called photovoltaic’s . These are made from semiconductor materials that have photovoltaic effect that is create electric energy on contact with light at an atomic level. Since year 1954 after manufacture of the first photovoltaic module, solar technology has under gone very outstanding developments from production of small scale energy producing single cell solar products to large scale arrays made from several modules (Hanjalić, Krol & Lekić, 2008).
Photovoltaic technology has many merits which include; provision of clean-green energy, access to free energy from nature, provision of a means to get energy in remote areas provided there is sunlight which are easy to install, provide a low cost operation and maintenance energy sources, less noisy energy source and also has led to increased development in remote areas.
This technology suffers some demerits; the solar systems suffer high intermittency and unpredictable patterns, from lack of sunshine at night and cloudy days that calls for an added cost on provision of storage of this power in batteries during high peak times which are relatively expensive depending on desired capacity, need for additional equipments like batteries and inverters incur an added cost and high initial cost of solar panels installation depending on power requirements of the user (Solanski, 2009).
Photovoltaic technology in future will be used in construction of photovoltaic power station for production of large power reserves to be fed to the national grid by the interested countries. It will find great application in buildings which will be designed to generate their own energy. The transport energy that currently relies on fossil fuel is currently carrying out research on developing solar vehicles and electric vehicles and also in spacecraft applications. This technology will be widely applied in design of standalone devices like calculators, street lighting systems and city clocks with feasibility attained through integration with integrated electronics and modern liquid crystal screens (Galarraga, Gonzalez-Eguino, & Markandya, 2011).
In rural electrification in third world countries where the main grids are expensive to feed the remote interior areas together with less power led lighting bulbs and other less power appliances, design of floatovoltaics used in irrigation ponds and also that save land usage by avoiding a land solar system, dye solar cells which is a research project yet to be realized in a working project, telecommunication and signaling devices the currently integrated systems are telephone switching systems, radio and TV broadcasting systems, microwave systems and electronic communication links and photovoltaic thermal hybrid solar collectors which convert solar power to thermal and electrical energy using both photovoltaic cells and solar thermal collector.

References

Solanski, C. S. (2009). Solar photovoltaics: Fundamentals, technologies and applications. New Delhi: PHI Learning.
Hanjalić, K., Krol, R. ., & Lekić, A. (2008). Sustainable energy technologies: Options and prospects. Dordrecht: Springer.
Galarraga, I., Gonzalez-Eguino, M., & Markandya, A. (2011). Handbook of Sustainable Energy. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar Pub.