Solar Energy Education for Beginners
It is said that
necessity is the mother of invention, and
that is true even for solar energy. Many initiatives
in solar energy were thought up because their
inventors saw that conventional energy supplies
would be used up too fast and that no energy
supply had been developed to serve as back
up. Solar energy education for beginners should
always emphasize this fact – that solar
energy may be all we have standing between
a society that is hungry for energy and conventional
energy supplies that cannot meet the level
of demand.
The necessity that triggered the creation
of many solar energy systems was the need
for affordable power supplies after oil became
very expensive to buy from oil producing nations.
Many governments and members of the private
sector in oil-dependent countries realized
that these oil-producing nations literally
have oil-dependent countries in a stranglehold,
which they can slowly or quickly squeeze as
the inclination takes them. If these oil-producing
nations choose to cut off the spigot of oil
to the world (perhaps in a bid to get higher
prices), they literally have the world at
their feet begging for the opportunity to
buy oil for their respective citizenries and
economies.
Enter solar energy systems which to many government
leaders could prove to be lifesavers for oil-dependent
countries that want to break loose from the
chokehold imposed on them by oil-producing
countries. One city where solar energy systems
are becoming more and more accepted is Freiburg
in Germany. The city residents once voted
against the establishment of a nuclear plant
in their city in 1975. This helped spark fledgling
interest in solar energy systems which is
why Freiburg has the biggest solar energy
institute dubbed the Fraunhofer Institute
for Solar Energy Systems. With Freiburg leading
the way in solar energy initiatives, Germany
voted in year 2000 to completely phase out
their nuclear energy systems by year 2020.
Germany presently uses solar energy to create
around 750 megawatts of electricity for the
needs of the entire country (as of 2006 numbers
from the German Solar Industry Association),
which is a sharp increase from the 83 megawatts
of solar-energy based electricity produced
in year 2002. The federal government of Germany
has invested over $1.75 billion for photovoltaic
research (starting in the latter part of the
1990s.) Germany will probably find such investments
paying off in the future because if they have
advanced knowledge in how to create solar
energy systems then communities, individuals,
corporations and even governments that will
need solar energy systems will turn to German
techies for help developing such solar energy
systems. It can be said that Germany is a
forerunner in the solar energy industry because
of this approach.Another reason German opted
to pursue solar energy systems development
was because of the Chernobyl nuclear power
plant disaster in 1986 which sparked fears
of using nuclear power as a source of continuous
energy supplies.
Furthermore, German solar energy proponents
expect that their efforts to propagate interest
in solar energy and how it can help common
folk will serve as the fuel for more progress
in developing the solar energy industry.
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