Generating Power In The Future – Solar Wind Power

As the world discovers new ways to meet its growing energy needs, energy generated from Sun, which is better known as solar power and energy generated from wind called the wind power are being considered as a means of generating power.

Though these two sources of energy have attracted the scientists for a very long time, they are not able to decide, which of the two is a better source to generate power. Now scientists are looking at a third option as well.

Scientists at Washington State University have now combined solar power and wind power to produce enormous energy called the solar wind power, which will satisfy all energy requirements of human kind.

Advantages of Solar wind power.

• The scientists say that whereas the entire energy generated from solar wind will not be able to reach the planet for consumption as a lot of energy generated by the satellite has to be pumped back to copper wire to create the electron-harvesting magnetic field, yet the amount that reaches earth is more than sufficient to fulfill the needs of entire human, irrespective of the environment condition.
• Moreover, the team of scientists at Washington State University hopes that it can generate 1 billion billion gigawatts of power by using a massive 8,400-kilometer-wide solar sail to harvest the power in solar wind.
• According to the team at Washington State University, 1000 homes can be lit by generating enough power for them with the help of 300 meters (984 feet) of copper wire, which is attached to a two-meter-wide (6.6-foot-wide) receiver and a 10-meter (32.8-foot) sail.
• One billion gigawatts of power could also be generated by a satellite having 1,000-meter (3,280-foot) cable with a sail 8,400 kilometers (5,220 miles) across, which are placed at roughly the same orbit.
• The scientists feel that if some of the practical issued are solved, Solar wind power will generate the amount of power that no one including the scientists working to find new means of generating power ever expected.

How does the Solar wind power technology work?

The satellite launched to tap solar wind power, instead of working like a wind mill, where a blade attached to the turbine is physically rotated to generate electricity, would use charged copper wire for capturing electrons zooming away from the sun at several hundred kilometers per second.

Disadvantages of Solar wind power

But despite the fact that Solar wind power will solve almost all the problems that we were to face in future due to power generating resources getting exhausted, it has some disadvantages as well. These may include:

• Brooks Harrop, the co-author of the journal paper says that while scientists are keen to tap solar wind to generate power, they also need to keep provisions for engineering difficulties and these engineering difficulties will have to be solved before satellites to tap solar wind power are deployed.
• The distance between the satellite and earth will be so huge that as the laser beam travels millions of miles, it makes even the tightest laser beam spread out and lose most of the energy. To solve this problem, a more focused laser is needed.
• But even if these laser beams reach our satellites, it is very doubtful that our satellites in their present form will be able to tap them. As Greg Howes, a scientist at the University of Iowa puts it, “The energy is there but to tap that energy from solar wind, we require big satellites. There may be practical constraints in this.”

Long history of solar energy

As with hydropower, solar energy has a long history. Many pre-historic cultures used it to warm their dwellings, dry their clothes, and cure their food. The importance of solar energy was so great that most cultures revered the Sun and created rudimentary observatories to track its location in the sky (ex. Stonehenge).

Some found solar energy so important that they even codified its power in their laws.

Ancient Romans relied so heavily on solar energy to heat their homes and bathhouses that it was illegal to build a house or dwelling so tall so as to block the sunlight of any neighbor.

Ancient Rome was not the only culture to rely heavily on the Sun for energy. The Anasazi cliff dwellers of the ancient American Southwest also used their knowledge of the Sun’s motion in the sky to heat and cool their homes. They built their dwellings into the sides of cliffs that faced the south. In the winter, sunlight was able to shine on their homes, while the cliffs protected their homes from cold northern winds that might blow.

In the summer, the overhangs from the cliffs shaded their homes from the Sun, and thus made it cooler.

Just as with hydropower, solar energy began to wane as a conventional energy source as fossil fuels and nuclear energy became cheap and reliable. The expense and variability of using sunlight has relegated its use to unusual situations where fossils fuels and nuclear energy are not available or where they are prohibitive to use or maintain. A perfect example of this is on satellites, which need energy to power all on board computers and instrumentation. Using fossil fuels to power a satellite over its lifetime would require quantities of oxygen and fuel that would be prohibitive to shoot into orbit. Nuclear material would be fine for powering the spacecraft, but would become very problematic when the satellites life was over and it came crashing back to Earth.

An example of solar energy that is closer to home are interstate call boxes that are in remote locations. Rather than spending a lot of money to run telephone and electric lines out to these call boxes, one can use a solar panel equipped with a battery and a cell or satellite phone.

Outside of these few types of uses, though, solar energy has seen limited usage. In fact, in some parts of the U.S., the use of solar energy is prohibited. Covenants in some modern subdivisions that have homeowners associations actually forbid the use of solar panels or clotheslines for drying clothes. The reason for this is one of aesthetics: using solar systems can look “ugly” and hurt property values. Some states, such as California, have actually written state laws that prohibit subdivision convents from doing this.

I’m pretty worried about this folks that bring this kind of laws that forbid use of solar energy! People still has to learn that energy is not free, but is everywhere, and sometimes clean, but not pretty.

SOURCE: ESA21 Environmental Science Activities for the 21st Century