The exhibit on renewables had some great insight, and it was mostly about solar panels. We need energy for our everyday lives, and the sources we mainly rely on today are polluting the planet and will eventually run out. Our planet enjoys resources that replenish constanstly, like wind, solar, geothermal heat, and moving water. What I found very interesting was CSP. Concentrated solar power (CSP) focuses sunlight onto a small area and uses the resulting heat to make electricity. Mirrors or lenses concentrate the scattered light from the Sun into a focal point, heating up a fluid by hundreds of degrees. The heat is used to make steam, which moves a turbine and generates electrical power. Sunlight is so abundant, but dispersed, a CSP structure focuses the light using troughs, dishes, towers, and sunlight is used most effectively. These structures can take up a lot of space; however, if you place it in an open desert for example, you can collect a lot of light for a relatively low cost. Since light is intermittent, energy can only be retrieved at certain hours of the day. Some plants utilize molten salt to store heat for hours.

The exhibit on photovoltaics was pretty useful as well, however, it contained a bunch of information I could have found on the internet. I learned about the different ways you can implement solar panels on existing structures like building rooftops, walls, curtains,  or to make new ones like parking structure canopies. Currently, it is still pretty expensive to implement. I am curious to see how companies try to make this a cheaper source of energy, either by using new cheaper  materials or making the panel more efficient.