Is there a way to use the sun for energy instead of using the power plants?

Question

I know that some people use. But I mean in mass production. With rewards from our government

Answer 1

im not sure

Answer 2

Microwave transmission from a collector satellite in a geosynchronous orbit could beam truly large amounts of electricity to a receiving station on the ground and deliver it to the power grid.

Answer 3

solar energy use is expanding but is still costly unless you engineer passive solar into a house when it is built. one problem is where will the money for the government subsidies come from given our large national debt

Answer 4

Right now they have solar energy options. The only problem is it is not efficient enough yet(for my taste). The government should take a couple of days off in Iraq and donate that money to subsidizing for efficient solar power generation. It has great potential, but is still costly. I will buy panels when they can pwoer my whole house for $40,000 worth of panels, and the panels last for 20 years.

Answer 5

I am working on 5 in California. Conentrating solor power can replace any NG, Coal or oil power plant, but we would have to change them over soon.

I attended the Focus the Nation at Sierra College on 1-31-08. The event was the 2% Solution, a 2% reduction over 40 years to solve GW. Oil is a nonrenewable resource and we are running out-but not soon - $30 Gal for gas. The 2% Solution is ok for the USA for a 10 year plan to cut 20%. But over those 10 years, we have to be building renewable energy and about that time, we can cut an additional 20%. This should get us from importing any oil. We must have a pollution surcharge where we pay the real price (health effects, GW and cleanup) for oil, NG, coal, cigarettes, Cooling Towers, Cars, trains and airplanes. Humans have to put some of this nonrenewable into renewable energy like small hydro-electric dams, concentrating solar power plants, wind and wave machines, nuks, and geothermal. With the peak of oil in the 1970’s, peak NG in the 1990’s, having mined cheep coal, the peak of ocean fishing in the 1980’s, and the peak of uranium in the 1990’s, humans must stop procrastinating and make real changes to keep earth sustainable including in the energy debate, finance and regulation.

Many of mankind’s advancements cause earth surface to warm, destroy the ozone layer, kill off endanger species, heat cities, and in some way cause more dramatic destruction.  Blacktop and buildings (roads, roofs and parking lots-heat cities), deforestation (air pollution, soil erosion), duststorms (increase hurricanes and cyclones, cause lung diseases), fires (cause pollution, mud slides, and deforestation), refrigerants (like CFC's) and solvents (including benzene destroy the ozone layer raising skin cancer rates) and plastics; cars, airplanes, ships and most electricity production (causes pollution including raised CO2 levels and increased lung and other diseases); these human problems we must fix to keep life on earth sustainable! Humans have destroyed half of the wetlands, cut down nearly half of the rain forest, and advance on the earths grasslands while advancing desertification which increases duststorms.

The result is:  change is on the way, we just do not know what changes (where and when). Look beyond the hype, beyond the weather, beyond a quarterly report and beyond today. President Bush has made a choice of energy (ethanol) over food and feeding the starving people around the world; this is a choice China has rejected. The fact is Bush wants to buy your food to send to starving people since our is not available.

Over the next 90 years carbon dioxide is projected to skyrocket as human’s burn more fossil fuels. The problem is, the oil will be gone in 30 years at present rates of consumption without projected increases. We have to come up with what will take its place. Again we have to cleanup our mess. One of the big problems we have is at some time Yellowstone will blow its top again, as the magma move closer to the surface, creating a nuk winter. After that we will not have to worry about the destruction of the ozone layer.

But with that we must understand we have never seen what is now happening before. CO2 has never lead to temperature change, but temperature change has led to increases in CO2. The models have to be made as we go along with current evidence! But again adding a small amount of CO2 to the atmosphere enlarges the earths sun collection causing warming; increase water in the atmosphere and it forms clouds cooling earth but sometimes causing flooding. Even natural events are warming earth and causing destruction. The sun has an increased magnetic field causing increases in earthquakes (more destruction), volcanoes (wow, great destruction), and sun spots. Lighting produces ozone near the surface (raising air pollution levels). The USA Mayor's have taken a stand and I believe are on the right track, we can have control and can have economic growth. The sun is available to produce energy, bring light to buildings and makes most of human’s fresh water. Composting is the answer to desertification. New dams are the answer to fresh water storage, energy and cooling earth by evaporation, we need many small ones all over (California needs 100 by 2012 and has not even started).

That is why I founded CoolingEarth.org, a geoengineering web sight where you can learn more about earth, the atmosphere, and how to sustain life on earth’s surface.

Answer 6

solar panels... lol

But they arent as efficient as they need to be.  We could be on the brink of some technological breakthrough, I hope.  

Although the sun emits an extremely large amought of energy, there is only a tiny fraction of it landing on your backyard.  You can only get so much power from one small area.

Answer 7

We could have a nearly 100% solar electric grid by the end of this century, and 65% by 2050: cheap, 100% clean energy that will never, ever need any fuel. The technology is already here and it is competitive with the price of fossil fuel power plants. In fact, when you really add up all the costs to our country from continued fossil fuel use, the solar is much cheaper, in my opinion.

Here's how we can achieve that. This is an article from January 2008 Scientific American

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-so...

The cost of this plan in taxpayer money would be spread over 20 years or more, at less than what we are giving to the oil companies in subsidies..

To learn more about solar thermal plants check out the websites of some of the companies.

Ausra.com

BrightSource    http://www.brightsourceenergy.com/

eSolar   http://www.esolar.com/

http://www.skyfuel.com/

http://www.solucar.es/sites/solar/en/ind...

There are now at least 7 companies doing this in the U.S.   Ausra is building a 175 megawatt plant near San Luis Obispo, CA. There are solar thermal plants already okayed or on the drawing boards in California totalling 2.6 gigawatts.

San Francisco could be powered by 1 gigawatt.

Hoover Dam is 2 gigawatts and so is a medium size nuclear plant for comparison.

These are just the beginning.

Other companies use concentrating Photovoltaic solar with comparable results.

Once you have a clean electrical grid, you can have all electric cars trucks buses etc.

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from Ausra's website

"Solar is one the most land-efficient sources of clean power we have, using a fraction of the area needed by hydro or wind projects of comparable output. All of America's needs for electric power – the entire US grid, night and day – can be generated with Ausra's current technology using a square parcel of land 92 miles on a side. For comparison, this is less than 1% of America's deserts, less land than currently in use in the U.S. for coal mines."

"Solar thermal power plants such as Ausra's generate electricity by driving steam turbines with sunshine. Ausra's solar concentrators boil water with focused sunlight, and produce electricity at prices directly competitive with gas- and coal-fired electric power."

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Answer 8

Yes. For years people have experimented with solar power. In some states the government does offer some incentives for people that use this green power. Solar power cells are very expensive and have not really come down in price over the years.