Solar Energy in Edmonton

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The ancient Greeks and Chinese had designed their homes to allow sunlight to come in and provide enough illumination without making the room too hot. These were the earliest known examples of solar architecture. Today, the pursuit of using renewable energy is incorporated into urban planning methods so that eco-friendly buildings and homes could be built.

What is solar energy?

Solar energy or power is heat and electricity derived from the rays of the sun. The amount of solar radiation that reaches the Earth’s atmosphere is at 174 petawatts. 1 petawatt (PW) is equivalent to the laser pulses of the world’s most powerful operational laser at the Texas Center for High Intensity Laser Science. However, a portion of the solar radiation bounces back to space, while some of it is absorbed by the atmosphere, land masses, and oceans. The total absorbed solar energy averages at 3,850,000 exajoules (EJ) in a year. Currently, there are two known methods of transforming solar energy into electricity - through photovoltaics and solar power plants.

Photovoltaics is a technology which directly converts sunlight to electricity with the use of solar cells. It works by having photons from the sun captured by solar panels, which then transform it to a higher form of energy. Solar power plants produce electricity indirectly by creating steam with the use of heat from solar thermal collectors. The steam then powers generators.

Solar energy for homes

Residential solar energy involves passive solar building design, which is a component of constructing “green buildings” or “eco-friendly buildings.” The purpose of using passive solar building designs in homes is to keep room temperature at a comfortable level, while decreasing the need for active cooling and heating systems. Today, the advances in solar design allow computer modeling such that buildings and homes can be built with an integrated heat and cooling system, ventilation, and solar lighting system.