Renewable energy is one of the hottest debates today because of the fact that there is a growing awareness for it. Renewable energy is basically energy coming from natural resources that can be easily renewed such as wind, geothermal heat and the sun. Solar energy is the most popular type of renewable energy because of the sheer abundance of ultraviolet rays in our atmosphere. It is also very popular because it can be easily integrated in any structure such as a house and a building. All you need to have are solar panels and also a battery to store it in. Solar energy or solar power is the most accessible type of renewable energy and it is also considered to be one of the cleanest sources of energy.
A photovoltaic cell is needed to generate solar energy. It works by actually converts light into electricity. It is actually a pretty old type of technology since it was first created in the late 1800’s by Charles Fritts. However, it only became popular in the past few years. The main reason why it was invented was because in the late 1800’s there was some speculation that there will be a shortage of coal but after that, the development of solar panels or solar cell quickly stagnated but there was a resurgence in the early twentieth century. There were a number of events that contributed to the resurgence of the solar energy research like the energy crises in the late seventies and also the oil embargo in 1973 which caused petroleum and oil prices to increase exponentially. Today, solar cell or solar panel installation has begun to expand to more suburban or residential area and there are some governments that are giving incentives to people that are willing to install solar panels or solar cells in their homes.
So how does solar energy get stored? One of the main disadvantages of solar energy is that it is not available when the sun is not out. That is why, storing it is very important so that you will have access to electricity all through out the night. Most off the grid photovoltaic systems use batteries that can recharged in order to store electricity that is not used which makes it a lot easier to be stored. Batteries are a convenient way of storing energy because they are very portable and they do not occupy a lot of space.
