Most people don't realize it, but in reality, everything on the planet is actually solar-powered – from "infernal" combustion engines to your own body.
The problem is, for most of history that energy has had to go through virtual "middlemen," with consequences that have been none too healthy for society or the environment. This is where photovoltaic solar energy has the potential to solve a great many problems – if we aren't too selfish and short-sighted.
Photovoltaic energy is nothing new – in fact, it's been around on Earth for a few billion years. The original photovoltaic solar cells are actually plant cells. As you may remember from your high school biology, plants have the ability to use sunlight directly, which in turn allows them to convert water and carbon dioxide into food with oxygen as by-product.
When ancient plants died millions of years ago and eventually went into the ground, the food energy from the sun that was stored in their cells went with them. Under tremendous geologic pressure over eons, this bio-matter was transformed into forms of carbon we now know as petroleum and coal. When these are burned, it releases the energy that was stored in those molecules millions of years ago. (So, arguably, coal and oil are renewable energy sources – the problem is that the renewal process takes several hundred million years.)
In this article Jonathon Blocker writes about
photovoltaic solar energy and
photovoltaic
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