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The first time i came to know about Solar Energy was after watching the movie “Race the Sun”. It was a story about low- income and under achieving Hawaiian students encouraged by their teacher to join the Solar Car race. In the movie, a car shaped like a cockroach and covered with solar panels used the sun’s rays as an alternative energy source to run the car.

Solar energy is the light and the heat from the sun. Solar energy is a free and unlimited source of energy. Using of solar energy causes no air and water pollution. But there is still some impacts on the environment although indirect.

The efficiency of solar power for homes can greatly be increased with the use of daylight systems. It is used to provide interior illumination replacing the artificial lighting. Daylight systems include sawtooth roofs, light shelf, skylights, and light tube. Daylight systems when they are properly implemented can reduce lighting-related energy consumption by 25 percent.

Solar energy can also be developed into solar thermal technologies which can be used for water heating, space heating, space cooling and process heat generation. Solar energy can also be used to distil water and make saline or brackish water potable or drinkable.

Sun’s light can be converted into electricity by a method known as Photovoltaics or PV. PV has been mainly used to power small and medium-sized things like a calculator powered by a single solar cell. There are homes powered by photovoltaics. Using solar energy for water and space heating is the most widely use application of solar energy. While ventilation and solar air heating is also growing in popularity.

Although there are lots of benefits for using solar energy, but solar energy efficiency still has some downside. Its disadvantage being that it does not work during night time. The cost of setting up solar stations is expensive, but the benefit of using solar energy when accumulated is so much more.

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