According to the South Brunswick Post, Dow Jones has launched a massive solar project.
On Monday a ribbon cutting ceremony was held for the solar project which will be built on it’s route 1 campus. 13,000 solar panels will be installed on parking areas throughout the 2,000 acre campus. Depending on how much sunlight their is the solar system will account for between 15% to 50% of energy consumption of the campus.
Used with creative commons permission from Brighton Earthship
During the ribbon cutting ceremony U.S. Senators Frank Lautenberg and Robert Menendez, made mention of the BP oil spill fiasco, and encouraged a need to move away from traditional dirty forms of generating power, such as oil, and coal, and move towards clean renewable sources of energy. The Senators heavily praised Dow Jones for it’s efforts to go solar, and encouraged other large corporate entities to follow in their foot steps.
The solar [...]
Photo used under Creative Commons from James Cridland
So what’s the major aspect of solar energy that’s really holding it back? Don’t know the answer?
Well I’ll tell you, it’s efficiency.
Efficiency of silicon solar cells at the moment is limited to around 30%. That’s not a lot when you think about it. That means 70% of the sunlight that’s hitting your panel is completely wasted.
So why is it wasted, and why can we not figure out a way to utilize more?
Well first you need to understand a bit of the science of how silicon solar cells work… Nope, not gonna get into a long winded discussion right here, if you would like to know more about that please visit Solar Energy Facts.
The problem is that most of the energy coming from the sun is just to high to be turned in to usable energy. Hot Electrons is the term used to [...]
So what are some solar energy facts anyways? How about how do solar panels work, and how is sunlight turned into energy?
The solar revolution has been happening for the last 20 years and is now firing into high gear. It has taken a long time for the technology to become feasible enough for everyday people to utilize. The best part is the technology is increasing at an ever increasing speed. Solar panels or photovoltaic cells as they are sometimes called (photo = light, voltaic = electricity) are needed to generate solar power from the sun. But how exactly does it do this? Well, we need to think of solar power as a source of electricity and that the process of generating it works on the same principles of other forms of electricity. The flow of energy, after generated is run through electrical wiring to appliance’s in your house [...]
