The Basics On Solar And Wind Power

Energy is quite literally what makes the world go around, and without the continuous supply of energy that is taken for granted on the whole, everything in life would dramatically and quickly come to a halt. Solar and wind power are two incredibly important and highly significant factors in this matter, and both should be properly and thoroughly understood and considered in order to gain a respective ideal on the subject issue. In order to truly gain a proper understanding on solar and wind power, all key issues should be taken fully into consideration.

What Are Solar And Wind Power?

Solar and wind power are alike and different in many ways, and the similarities and differences of solar and wind power should both be properly learned and understood. First, the term solar power is used to describe the number of methods which include the harnessing of energy from the sun. Solar power has been around and been considered and used for centuries, although it has truly only come into completely widespread use as of particularly lately.

Solar energy is energy which is derived directly from the sun, and passive solar heating involves that of the design of homes and buildings in order to make use of direct sunlight for that of heating purposes. Most of the solar energy today is harnessed as heat or electricity, and the most common uses for solar power involve that of: solar design in architecture, solar heating systems, solar cooking, solar lighting, and more.

Wind power is literally defined as the conversion of wind energy into more useful forms, which is usually that of electricity using wind turbines. Most of the modern wind power is primarily generated in the form of electricity by converting the rotation of turbine blades into electrical current through the means of an electrical generator. Wind energy is incredibly abundant, widely distributed, clean, and renewable.

We as a people have, in fact, used the wind as an energy source for a particularly lengthy amount of time. In fact, the electricity-generating wind turbines were invented in the United States and Europe in the late 1800s. Wind power didn’t used to be much of a topic of interest, however as of recently there has been a sudden increasing interest in it. There are two primary reasons for this, which are: one, most electricity generated today uses non-renewable fuels such as coal, oil, and gas and secondly, advances in wind power science and technology are reducing the cost of wind power to a point where it is actually becoming competitive with many other energy sources.