Sustainable Energy Applications Discuss Solar Energy - Essay Example

growth in the field of solar energy is remarkable due to the improvement of technologies and by the support provided by the policies implemented by the government in the field of development of solar energy and its use (Timilsina, Kurdgelashvili, and Narbel). There are mainly 2 types of technologies to generate solar energy, and they are: solar thermal and solar photovoltaic (PV). The former deals with the conversion of solar radiation to heat, or also called as thermal energy, and the latter is the technique which deals with converting sunlight directly into electricity (“Chapter 10: Solar Energy” 263).

The solar thermal technology is again divided into two such as solar thermal non-electric and solar thermal electric (4). Solar thermal non-electric technology is used in solar cookers, solar water heaters, solar air heaters, solar coolers, agricultural drying, etc. On the other hand, solar thermal electric technology is the method of directly using solar heat for the production of steam for generating electricity, which is otherwise known as concentrated solar power (4). Currently 2 types of PV technologies are present in the market, namely thin film technology made up of different types of semi-conductor materials such as cadmium telluride, copper indium gallium diselenide, amorphous silicon, etc.

, and the second technology is called crystalline silicon-based PV cells (4). The history of solar energy begins between 1860 and the First World War, when a wide range of techniques were established to generate steam by obtaining sun’s heat so as to run the irrigation pumps and engines (4). In 1954, at Bell Labs in the United States, Solar PV cells were used for generating electricity in space satellites (Timilsina et al. 4). The energy provided by the sun can be directly collected and used to make high temperature steam, i.e. more than 1000 C, and low temperature steam, i.e. less than 1000 C (Energy Technology Fact Sheet).

These methods are implemented in