Blog Post #5: Solar Energy Around The World

Solar energy is the cleanest and most abundant energy source available in today’s day and age. Solar energy can be used for generating electricity, providing lighting, and heating water for domestic, commercial, and industrial use. What’s even more positive about solar energy is that it can be created in many different ways! According to seia.org, “there are several ways to harness solar energy: photovoltaics (also called solar electric), solar heating & cooling, concentrating solar power (typically built at utility-scale), and passive solar.” The first three of these, which are active solar systems, use electrical devices to convert the sun’s heat and light to usable sources of energy. The others are passive solar systems, which are made to collect energy from the sun’s heat and distribute it without the use of moving parts. This kind of energy is a flexible technology as “solar power plants can be built as distributed generation (located at or near the point of use) or as a central-station, utility-scale solar power plant (similar to traditional power plants).” The utility scale plants can even store the energy for use after the sun sets!!

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http://www.seia.org/about/solar-energy

Due to the fact that solar energy is renewable and thus, will never run out, countries all of the world have been converting to using solar power. Below is a graph of the countries with the most installed solar energy.

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Solar Energy Statistics

 

As you can see, Germany is the leading country in the Solar Energy industry, and its use is continuing to grow!  According to planetsave.com, “During 2009, Germany installed eight times more megawatts of photovoltaics solar energy capacity than America did that year.” While Germany has already converted much of its energy to solar, installing thousands of solar panels, the country plans to rely only on renewable energy by 2050. Recently, German solar farms produced a world record of 22 gigawatts of energy which is equivalent to the output of 20 nuclear plants. An image of the farms can be seen below:

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Germany Smashes Solar Energy Records


Read more at http://planetsave.com/2012/03/06/top-6-countries-using-solar-energy/#Qyo0O8EJIEKwol5d.99

 

Just behind Germany is spain, which gets 10% of its energy from solar power. In fact, Spain was once the leader in solar power. Furthermore, the Vatican has the larger solar power plant in Europe! “Although it is the smallest country in the world, the Vatican has spent $660 million to build a massive 100MW photovoltaic installation. The output will be more than enough to provide enough power for the whole country.” This is an incredible step forward into solar energy. Below, is an image of the solar power device in the Vatican.

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Over the next few years, it will certainly be exciting to watch countries convert to solar energy! Clearly, this is already happening and proving to be a success in creating more renewable energy in order to save our beloved planet earth. I will most definitely be looking more into this topic!

 

 

 

 

19 thoughts on “Blog Post #5: Solar Energy Around The World

  1. Wow! Nice to hear that in a next few years, it will certainly be exciting to watch countries convert to solar energy. That a good news to read hoping that’s will be. A great contribution to save mother earth.

  2. Great article! Extremely informative, do you believe Germany will be able to meet their goal of depending solely on renewable energy by 2050? The fact you stated “German solar farms produced a world record of 22 gigawatts of energy which is equivalent to the output of 20 nuclear plants”, is there any cost benefit analysis explaining if it the initial investment is beneficial?

  3. It’s great to see solar energy increasing exponentially, but more countries should do more and take a leaf out of Germany’s book, as they are very efficient with solar.

    I also agree with the comment above regarding Indonesia – there is so much solar potential there, as it is so close to the equator.

    Great read…

  4. The technical advances responsible have been driven by public policies and industry’s responses to them. Governments spend a relatively modest amount on renewable-energy research, roughly US$5 billion per year globally, which is less than one-tenth the amount allocated to health research. But government incentives are essential for market growth; they drive private-sector investments in clean-energy technologies of about $250 billion per year globally.

  5. “Germany is the leading…” as always Germany is leader of one of the must important source of energy, i really like this country.. we still far from this tech in our country.

  6. As someone from England I think it is quite alarming that we do not utilize solar energy as much. We need to take a leaf out of Germanys book.
    We are far behind in the Netherland, but we are working right now hard on it
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