To put it simply, ‘Solar power’ is energy that we obtain from the sun. The sun provides us with an abundant source of energy. The energy the sun produced is apparent in the amount of light and heat is produces. Throughout history, people all over the world have revered and worshipped the sun. In agent Egypt the sun was considered a God by the name of Ra. Some of those sun worshipping cultures still exist today and practice sun worship today and make the recognition of the power that the sun contains part of their daily lives.

The sun has certainly earned all of it's recognition. The sun is, in fact, an abundant and limitless source of power. The benefits of using the sun for its solar energy are numerous and will continue to remain so for many years to come. Here are a look at some of the top reasons to use solar power.

The sun rises every morning, pouring it's energy down to the Earth. The solar energy released by the sun is filtered by the Earth's atmosphere. This source of power already provides free light to the entire world, but also helps radiate heat. Making our planet the life sustaining ecosystem that is is. Although this source of power has been in existence longer than man, we have only recently that we have begun to make use of this incredible source of abundant power.

Even though modern man is just getting acquainted with the idea of using the sun as a source of energy, man has explored this idea in the past. At one time Greeks and the Egyptians used the power of the sun by focusing it's radiation to a specific spot as a source of intense heat. There are also stories of the power of the sun being harnessed with large mirrors in ancient wars as a weapon.

There are no pollutants in the sun's energy. It is clean when it arrives at our planet and the process of converting the suns rays into energy does not produce any emissions that are harmful to the environment. The same can't be said for our most popular sources of energy present today. Organic fuels such as gasoline and coal leave behind residue produce harmful gasses during the process needed to convert them to a source of energy.

The sun isn't going anywhere. It has been around for about four and a half billion years and is likely to burn on for another four to five billion years to come. That estimate far exceeds the estimated usage time left for the fossil fuels in use today and we know we can count on the sun as an ongoing energy source for generations to come. The sun is also predictable, it rises every morning and sets every night at times which are easily predictable. But even when the sun sets, it is shining in another part of the world, so the sun is a 24 hour a day 7 day a week ongoing source of energy.

Since we know the sun will come out tomorrow and the next day and the next day and so on, we know we can tap into this energy source again and again to constantly renew our energy pool. The key is finding an economical way to store and distribute all of this energy.

The sun is an imense source of power, if we learn to harness and use this infinate source of solar energy, there is no limit to what we can power. In fact, the sun produces enough energy in just a few minutes to power the entire United States for a full year. Imagine having the ability to harness this energy? The world's energy problems would be solved permanately.

Do you ever wonder why we are still using fossil fuels instead of the sun as our energy source? How could we let all of this energy go to waste? Why aren't we focusing more on figuring out how to efficiently harness solar energy? 

The main reason is that sunlight we receive is very thinly distributed across the Earth. So the solar energy collection system needed to produce enough power for the world would have to be extremely efficient in order to make a substantial impact on the world's energy crisis.

In order to harness and use the power of the sun, we need to be able to focus and store the sun's energy on demand. We also need to have the ability to manipulate this solar energy in order to turn it into the type of energy we need to run our everyday lives. Although experts around the world have been trying. they have only been able to come up with three ways to collect solar energy. These methods work, but are only partially successful due to their lack of efficiency.

This method of harnessing solar energy focuses on directing the rays of the sun to a single point of focus. The heat that is generated at the center of that focus is full of concentrated energy that is then collected. The set up of the reflection method can be as simple as a single dish-shaped mirror to a complex field filled with mirrors that all tilt as needed to direct the power of the sun to a central collection point.

The diagram to the right shows how incoming light refracts off of the curve of a parabolic mirror, guiding the incoming light to reflect in toward the center of the dish rather than reflecting straght back out.

This is perhaps the simplest method of harnessing the heat energy of the sun and one that you can even set up yourself at home fairly easily. This set up of tanks and pipes that are painted black, a sun absorbing color, hold gallons of water that are heated by the suns rays throughout the day, is how many solar powered water heaters are set up. The pipes and tanks are placed behind clear, thick glass that both insulates the heated water from colder air and increases the intensisty of the sun's rays.

The most recent discovery that is being widely used is that of the solar cell. A solar cell is a sun harnessing unit that is made of specially treated silicone crystals. When the sun's rays hit the crystals, a reaction occurs in the silicone, knocking electrons out of orbit and causing a chain reaction that sends electrons flowing from one sylicone crystal to another. In other words, it creates an electric current. This current can be tapped into as an immediate power source or diverted to a rechargable battery where it can be stored and used later.

As you can tell, there are very obvious advantages to using solar power as a major source of energy for the world. Unfortunately, hardly any solar power plants are currently in existence. As it stands right now, the technology we've developed to date is not as cost effective or reliable as it needs to be in order to be counted on as an instant alternative power source that is just waiting to be used. And mostly due to the high cost of producing solar power, it is not ready to be used as a mass source of energy.

Even the most efficient solar cells developed to date can not generate enough power to be used commercially without taking up an extremely large amount of space. In addition to that, our ability to store the solar energy we collect in not yet efficient enough to last for a significant period of time. A single cloudy day would result in power loss for millions and there is no way we could sustain power with stored solar energy reserves at all if we have two cloudy days in a row.

However, researchers are constantly working to develop the technology of solar power further. This research is resulting in smaller, more efficient solar cells that are capable of producing much more power than their predecesors. At the moment they are still too expensive to use as a source of mass energy for the world, but they are beginning to be used quite frequently in personal homes. Home solar units can be installed on your roof and pay for themselves easily with your homes reduced need for commercially supplied power. As more and more homes make use of this technology, we will not only demonstrate our desire for sloar power as an energy source, increasing the funds the goverment is willing to spend on research, but also reduce the amount of fossil fuel used to power our society.