Solar heating system is a process where we use the ultra-violet x-rays of the sum to transform it into heat and reserve it into big tanks and then use it for different heating purposes. This system is naturally used for the hot water that we use inside our home, or to heat up swimming pools. As we know some places have more sun than the other, I believe that a country like Haiti or in the Caribbean with this technology at their disposal could really take advantage of the sun for the whole 12 months. There is more than one system available when it come s to use the sun as a resource. The most popular one right now is photovoltaic cells. This process is now more common these days, because it provides countries like United States, Germany and France an outlet or a support since the demand of electricity for the population is increasing exponentially. So both the makers are struggling with providing enough electricity, as well as trying to solve the pollution issue and the population is revolting again the increase in cost for electricity.
Application
So photovoltaic cells are something a lot of big industries are currently thinking of exploring. Especially Germany, ever since their idea and expense to use renewable energy to provide electricity has failed, they are looking into other options to meet the demand of the population quickly and reduce the cost of electricity.
According to nasa.gov, “Photovoltaic is the direct conversion of light into electricity at the atomic level. Some materials exhibit a property known as the photoelectric effect that causes them to absorb photons of light and release electrons. When these free electrons are captured, electric current results that can be used as electricity.”
The diagram above according to NASA illustrates the operation of a basic photovoltaic cell, also called a solar cell. Solar cells are made of the same kinds of semiconductor materials, such as silicon, used in the microelectronics industry. For solar cells, a thin semiconductor wafer is specially treated to form an electric field, positive on one side and negative on the other. When light energy strikes the solar cell, electrons are knocked loose from the atoms in the semiconductor material.
from this table below, I also found how much solar energy is used compared to other resources and it is quite a large amount:
So solar energy is one of the resources that many country are already using including the Untied States. this process may have being here for a while, but due to the high demand of electricity and decreasing its cost, as well as dealing with pollution has led big investors to widen their resource and explore photovoltaic cells more. so i guess we all would benefit if can could rely on this system to power up or provide electricity to homes and businesses.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewable_energy_commercialization
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2002/solarcells/