Fascinating Solar Power Science Fun Facts

Here is a selection of fascinating solar power fun facts. People have used the sun as a heat resource for thousands of years. It is only with the progress in technology that have taken place in recent years that have enabled us to fully harness this power.

Families in ancient Greece designed their homes to get the most sunlight throughout the chilly winter months. The ancient Greeks believed that the sun was the god Helios and he drove his chariot round the earth towards the sky in the morning and in the evening back again.

The invention of the photovoltaic effect is credited to the French physicist Alexandre-Edmond Becquerel in 1839.

In 1921 the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to Albert Einstein for experiments with solar power and photovoltaics.

Back in 1955 The American Solar Energy Society held its first gathering in Phoenix and attracted the first Russian scientist to the US following the second World War. There is film footage presenting early photovoltaics which was developed for NASA, solar cookers and solar heating panels.

The first solar flight occurred in 1974 in California by an unmanned plane which was put together by two brothers Roland and Bob Boucher.

In 1975 the first solar boat had been built in England and in 1996 Kenichi Horie from Japan made the first solar powered crossing on the Pacific Ocean in a catamaran.

The earliest World Solar Challenge took place in 1987. This is the solar-powered car race covering 3021 km through the Australian outback from Darwin to Adelaide.

Did you know it is possible to increase any solar panel productivity by 75% simply by positioning a mirror that is about twice the size of the panel on the ground in front of the solar panel?

PV cells do not require direct sunlight to work - you may still generate some electric power on a cloudy day.

Solar electricity is a green, renewable energy that does not release any damaging carbon dioxide or other pollutants. An average home PV system can save around 1200kg of CO2 per year which is about 30 tonnes spanning a lifetime.

It is possible to store the electricity that a solar power system generates in batteries for a cloudy day.

You may sell any extra electricity that you generate using your solar power back to the power company and make a little bit of money.

It takes only about eight minutes for solar energy to travel from the sun to earth.

About 30% of the radiation we receive from the sun in the upper atmosphere is reflected back up into space. The rest is absorbed by the clouds, oceans and also land masses on Earth. Yet even in these conditions, the power that our planet receives from just a single hour of sun exposure is equal to the amount of energy that humans use in an entire year.

Large scale solar projects which are being constructed world wide show that sun powered clean energy technology are both attainable and lucrative. Solar power plants produce Megawatts (MW) with one MW being sufficient power to supply 1000 households. One of the largest solar energy projects that the world has ever seen is the "Desertec" program to use the uninhabitable North African desert for a power grid of concentrated thermal electrical power stations that could supply Europe with all of its power requirements by the year 2050. So much progress in such a brief period of time let us see exactly where solar electricity will go from here.

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