Solar energy is our future

Solar energy

Solar energy is our power source in the future, this is simply because of our sun is always powering this planet since it's beginning and will not last until our solar system collapsed. Solar energy is powering our atmosphere to keep the wind blows and it also keeping the water flows around the ocean by heating some parts of our earth and producing temperature differences with the dark parts of the earth. The solar energy is currently converted to another usable forms mostly by plants via it's Photosynthetic pathways and later on we're able to gain the energy by eating or burning on some parts of this plants including fossilized form of the plants (e.g. coals, oil etc.).


Unfortunately the way we use this potential energy is far from efficient. Lots of amount of energy is lost during conversion and frequently the conversion added more CO2 to the atmosphere. Unavoidable huge energy demand and combined with inefficient energy conversion producing a large amount of CO2. This trend is increasing 20% during the last 40 years. You can review this figure about recent trend of increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration. Image is from Global warming art.

Solar cell

One option to reduce the inefficient way is utilizing solar cell. It cuts several steps of energy conversion thus reducing energy lost. For example to produce electricity, the energy "in usual way" will flows from the sun > leaves / chloroplast > starch / woods > sometimes become coals > fire > heated water / steams > turbine / generator > electricity. But if we use solar cell, the energy will flows from the sun > solar cell > electricity. Many unnecessary steps is passed by utilizing solar cell and it could reduced wasting energy on conversion.

Solar cell current problems

Amid it's potential yet solar cell is still under development to increase it's efficiency. Recent types of solar cell has a wide range of efficiency starting from 6% up to 40%, but a highly efficient solar cell is also very costly to produced and this could effect to low market demand. This production cost is challenging engineer to invent a novel way to produce a highly efficient solar cell with lowest production cost.