Solar Energy

Hi if anyone was is a solar expert of some sort, can you please help me and answer my interview questions? Its for a project and I need to interview someone with some sort of general knowledge of Solar power and technology

My Questions are:

Q1. What is it like working and putting together Solar equipment for people who are starting to go “green” and looking to save some money?

Q2.What are some of the benefits when working with a Solar company?

Q3.Are there any dangers when working with Solar equipment?

Q4. Do you think most of America will switch from Grid-tied energy and go to more eco-friendly solar power by the next decade?

Q5. What are your thoughts on solar energy and the effect it has on global warming?

Q6. Do you currently own any solar equipment of your own?

Q7. How often do you go out and set up solar equipment for other customers?

Q8. Do you like working with a solar company? What do you like about it?

Q9. How much money does solar power save you?

Q10. What are other benefits can you gain from using solar energy?

I’m not what you’re looking for, but maybe I can help a little? I’m doing a physics Masters in cadmium telluride solar cells. I work with a group of research scientists.

Q1: I don’t make panels for people. We build small ones in labs using different techniques and then test them to try and work out how to make them more efficient, so companies can help people ‘go green’ more cheaply later on :p the physics is very interesting & challenging though.

Q2: I work in a university, so I’m still a student. That’s fun!

Q3: Most solar equipment has very little danger, but we work with cadmium telluride, which is toxic. We have stringent safety procedures, although we only use tiny amounts (15g of the stuff coats about a square metre – the solar panels are very thin, about 5-thousandths of a millimetre).

Q4: No. It will take several decades; but I’m convinced that during the next decade some techs will become cost competitive in the US. We need to develop alternatives; porphyrin dye solar cells, copper-zinc-tin-sulphur cells or organics before we can provide countries worth of power.

Q5: It’s clean and can produce huge amounts of power without taking up much land like wind power does. You still need backup or energy storage, but it’s going to be very sensible in sunny places. I’ve calculated the heat flow changes and solar panels reduce global warming.

Q6: I have a solar charger for my phone and battery equipment that I was given as a gift & I use on camping etc. I wouldn’t buy any for a few years yet though: I live in northern England!

Q7: I don’t set it up for other people. I test cells pretty much every week though. With some periods of programming & writing in between.

Q8: I like being a student and researching something that other people haven’t done yet. The challenge of the unknown is great.

Q9: Zero, right now :p

Q10: Right now it’s too expensive, but in future it will be cheaper than grid power, and cleaner. Less air pollution = better health. Less global warming and insulation from price shocks when petrol and gas prices shoot up.

Only 80 billion(roughly 10% of the "Stimulus" bill) was spent on renewable energy. Nothing is being done to develop said technologies. More of the bill was spent on pork and earmarks than was spent on infrastructure and energy, two of our biggest needs. We can supply enough power to meet 100% of our needs through Solar energy. The technology is out there already. Why are we not doing this? Does this give an open window for a Republican to come in and propose better solutions for energy independence and clean energy?

ANYTHING with Obummer’s name on it is questionable.

I also want to know how much go for?

try internet and paid browsing sites

1) Does the battery ever need replacing?
2) How often do you have to recharge it?
3) If it’s left out in the sun for long periods can that be harmful?
4) I want to be able to use a laptop in the middle of nowhere away from society. Is there any way I can recharge it like with solar energy or something, so I don’t have to go back into society every time I want to charge it?
5) Laptop or ipad, which do you think is better?
ty

1-yes
2- 1 to 4 hours
3-the sun will damage it
4-yes
5- ipad’s suck

I’m doing a science report on solar energy, but I’m having a hard time finding information on more recent advances and developments in the area of harnessing solar power or putting it to use.
Also, how do solar chargers for cell phones, etc, work? Do they usually hook directly up to a solar panel, or do they connect a solar panel to a small solar cell, or…?

one simple device i’ve seen is a solar collector designed to heat water for residences. one variety consists of a piping or tubing laid out in a spiral shape or a rectangular panel, facing south to harness the sun’s rays to heat the water. it’s the same principle, as the ’sun shower’ used by outdoors enthusiasts.

some examples…
http://www.solardirect.com/swh/swh.htm
http://www.azsolarcenter.com/technology/solarh20.html
http://oscarsolarwaterheaters.com/

Those and other power generation methods will certainly play a big part, but I think that our entire power grid is an antique. If we updated that then we will be much more efficient and wont need to produce as much electricity. A lot of power is lost on long power lines. I also think that many smaller power plants would be a good idea. There are many small irrigation and flood control dams that have no power generators in them, we should make use of them since they are already there.

I need some information for my negative debate speech. The subject is "Should the American goverment support solar energy?" If you could help it would greatly appreciated. Thanks!

the cost

Does it look like there is no debate?

What happened to global warming?

By Paul Hudson
Climate correspondent, BBC News

This headline may come as a bit of a surprise, so too might that fact that the warmest year recorded globally was not in 2008 or 2007, but in 1998.

But it is true. For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures.

And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.

So what on Earth is going on?

Climate change sceptics, who passionately and consistently argue that man’s influence on our climate is overstated, say they saw it coming.

They argue that there are natural cycles, over which we have no control, that dictate how warm the planet is. But what is the evidence for this?

During the last few decades of the 20th Century, our planet did warm quickly.

Sceptics argue that the warming we observed was down to the energy from the Sun increasing. After all 98% of the Earth’s warmth comes from the Sun.

But research conducted two years ago, and published by the Royal Society, seemed to rule out solar influences.

The scientists’ main approach was simple: to look at solar output and cosmic ray intensity over the last 30-40 years, and compare those trends with the graph for global average surface temperature.

And the results were clear. "Warming in the last 20 to 40 years can’t have been caused by solar activity," said Dr Piers Forster from Leeds University, a leading contributor to this year’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

But one solar scientist Piers Corbyn from Weatheraction, a company specialising in long range weather forecasting, disagrees.

He claims that solar charged particles impact us far more than is currently accepted, so much so he says that they are almost entirely responsible for what happens to global temperatures.

He is so excited by what he has discovered that he plans to tell the international scientific community at a conference in London at the end of the month.

If proved correct, this could revolutionise the whole subject.

Ocean cycles

What is really interesting at the moment is what is happening to our oceans. They are the Earth’s great heat stores.

According to research conducted by Professor Don Easterbrook from Western Washington University last November, the oceans and global temperatures are correlated.

The oceans, he says, have a cycle in which they warm and cool cyclically. The most important one is the Pacific decadal oscillation (PDO).
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Oh it gets better from there! How badly will the MMGW crowd cripple our economy and damage our national security over AN UNPROVEN THEORY?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8299079.stm
"One thing is for sure. It seems the debate about what is causing global warming is far from over. Indeed some would say it is hotting up."
I hear ya folks. Looks like Al needs a new scam!
Great answers thanks. Here’s an interesting flashback…

1633, In April, the Inquisition formally interrogates Galileo, who has been detained in the building of the Inquisition for several weeks. Galileo agrees to plead guilty in order to receive a lenient sentence, and on April 30 he confesses that he advocated Copernican theory too vigorously in the Dialogue. He agrees to modify his opinions in his next work.

In June, the Pope orders Galileo imprisoned indefinitely under house arrest. Galileo makes his way back to his villa in Arcetri, near Florence, where he spends the remainder of his life under house arrest…end
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/galileo/life.html

Flash forward to *Pope Albert of The Blessed Church of MMGW* ~ LOL!
"The Copernican heliocentric model, with the sun at the center of the universe, demonstrated that the observed motions of celestial objects can be explained without putting the Earth at rest in the center of the universe."

couple this with the fact that the AGW crowd lost another "in the pocket" german scientist by the name of Professor Mojib Latif of Germany’s Leibniz Institute who by the way is a "peer reviewed" scientist that the AGW crowd likes to throw in our faces….who said,
"that we are entering a period in which the earth is likely to cool for a period of one to two decades."

also…"Dr. Mojib Latif, a prize-winning climate and ocean scientist from the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at the University of Kiel, wrote a paper last year positing that cyclical shifts in the oceans were aligning in a way that could keep the next decade or so relatively cool, even as the heat-trapping gases linked to global warming continue to increase."

but here’s something interesting…

"But Dr. Latif, who gives around 200 talks to the public, business leaders and officials each year, {{said he had been met with confusion and even anger when he tried to describe this normal variation in climate while at the same time conveying the long-term threat of global warming.}}"

but the best is here….

"Still, those projections are based on models, interpretations of tree ring variations and other indirect assessments of past temperatures that, while persuasive to most climate scientists, are not infallible."

and we all thought and have been told…"there is no debate", this is settled science….one more thing to add insult to injury, the antartic is thickening to unprecidented levels and recent satillite photos show the artic ice expanding….i wonder, how much longer before the AGW crowd finally understands that "the wolf can only cry for so long" !!!

What are engineering challenges to develop solar energy for comfort/home uses?

Solar is an old technology now and is fairly developed. Cost is a bit of a barrier but that is coming down quickly. Production scale could also be considered a barrier, as the industry can’t yet make enough solar panels to satisfy demand. The panels themselves are limited in how much energy they can take out of the sun’s rays, but they are getting better at this. Materials are a big thing now, mostly in trying out different materials and structures in the cells to bring down the cost and boost the efficiency.

There are many people who love America for its free enterprise system, but we have entered a day of age where free enterprise seems to do more harm than good. We are facing environmental problems that are degrading water supplies, the ground, polluting the air, and contributing to climate change. We as a society need to consume less, by implementing controls on industry that require them to either switch to a different source of energy, or cut pollution by at least 75%. It will be costly, but it is worth every penny if it means securing the future of America, and breaking the need for oil dependence. Solar, wind, and other renewable energy technology needs to be improved. I would like to hear some input from you people.

The hidden problem of your idea is called the Kutznets curve. It appears that when a country like the United States creates regulations like that, the firms just move to places with lower regulation not only permitting continued production and pollution, but higher pollution than had been occurring in the United States. Any regulation which is not mandatory on all countries will not work. The ideas are good, but the data appears to imply that you end up adding global pollution not reducing it.

Now government can help by switching ITS inputs to renewable forms. That would create sustainable demand, but the political problems would require a grass roots movement to enact.