What Is Solar Power?

The greatest property of solar power is that it is a renewable energy source. In other words, it will never run out. It will always be available to us.

Of course, this differs from the natural resources we currently use the most. Resources like oil and coal will someday run out. Therefore, we need to find a better way to create energy. And one of the great sources is solar power.

We’ve actually been using solar power since the beginning of time.

We’ve always used the light from the sun as a means to see during the day. And we’ve always used the warmth of the sun to get warm.

An ancient use of the sun that stretches back far into our history is the use of the sun to start a fire. This alone makes the sun a very powerful tool for mankind. And using the sun to start a fire is said to have been used in an ancient battle between the Greeks and the Romans. Legend has it that Archimedes used glass to reflect the sun onto Roman war ships to set them on fire.

Though the legend of lighting warships on fire can’t be proven, it has been proven that the Greeks used the sun and its solar power when building their homes. The Greeks built their houses with the main rooms facing south so that those rooms would be warmed by the sun.

The Greeks also put eaves on their roofs so that the rooms facing south could have shade from the powerful sun. The Greeks also discovered glass way back in the first century A.D. They then began to store goods in dark colored pottery in order to create thermal energy.

As much as the Greeks took advantage of sunlight, the Romans used it even more. The Romans were using too much of the forest all around Rome so they turned to sunlight to heat their central baths and for central heating in homes.

The Romans also used a greenhouse to capture sunlight and warmth in order to grow cucumbers for Tiberius Ceasar (the Roman emperor from 31 B.C.E. to 14 A.D.). In fact, the Romans also used greenhouses to grow fruits and vegetables that they found all around the world. They would either cover the greenhouses or leave them open in order to simulate the climate that the fruit or vegetable needed to grow.

Here is a picture of the ancient Roman bath houses. Notice the large windows facing south that allowed the bath houses to take full advantage of the warmth of the sun.

The Greeks and Romans weren’t the only early civilizations to use sunlight either. The Chinese, the Pueblo, and the Anasazi used sunlight for a variety of functions including heating and water evaporation. It also needs to be noted that even the most primitive civilizations used the sun’s energy to evaporate small pools of brackish water in order to collect the salt that was left behind.

The first time sunlight was ever linked to solar power electricity in any way was in France in 1839 when a physicist named Antoine-Cesar Becquerel found that submerging an electrode in a solution and shining light on it resulted in an electrical current being produced. That same year, another French physicist, Edmond Becquerel, discovered that a certain material would produce an electrical current when it was exposed to light. He called this the photovoltaic (PV) effect.

Then in the late 1800s the French engineer, August Mouchot, first used the sun to produce steam, which actually pumped out enough energy to run a half horsepower engine that pumped water in Algeria.

This was followed by solar power being used in many places including Arizona and Egypt in the early 1900s.

Solar Power Today

In today’s world, solar energy can be used for just about anything. The uses are actually divided into two categories: passive and active.

Passive uses of solar energy include choosing materials that attract the sun and hold heat, designing a space so that air can be circulated properly, and building something so that it’s able to take full advantage of the sunlight. The Greeks and Romans (among others) took advantage of the sun passively.

Active uses of solar energy require a means to capture the sunlight and then convert it so it can be used to supply power. Active uses include fans, panels, and pumps.

To understand the true power of the sun and the potential for energy from the sun, all you have to know is the facts stated by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 2008. MIT stated that the Earth receives enough energy in one hour to power the entire world for a year. Now that’s potential. But, of course, that potential has to be tapped into.

Solar power is a major source for renewable energy.