Renewable Energies

The existing energy supply picture worldwide, and in many industrialized countries, shows that more than 80% of overall energy consumption involves the use of coal, petroleum and natural gas. Hydroelectric power accounts for the largest share of renewable energies to date. The potentials of renewable energies have not yet been fully exploited worldwide. To do so, it will be necessary to overcome two considerable hurdles. One is that the energy provided by the sun arrives here at a low energy density. It must therefore be “collected” over large areas. For the use of solar energy, this requires greater investments than for the use of fossil energy sources, even considering all investments necessary for air-pollution control and the additional costs by CO2 certificates. The second basic difficulty for the use of renewable energy is the fact that solar and wind energy fluctuate. Moreover, they are hard to store, since neither seasonal heat storage of sufficient quality nor storage for large quantities of electrical energy are technically available.

A central question of future energy supply, and thus also a central question of the further energy research and technical development, is that of storage. Solar and wind energy replace fossil and nuclear energy sources. However, they cannot replace conventional power stations or heat production systems to any considerable degree. They need conventional backup systems, which thus make the use of renewable energies additionally more expensive. The price for hard coal would have to triple, for example, for the use of wind power to become competitive from a strictly business-management point of view. The use of sunlight for electric-power generation by means of photovoltaics cannot become competitive by means of price rises for energy at today’s costs of photovoltaic facilities. What is needed here is a technological breakthrough leading to a considerable reduction in the cost of photovoltaics, in order to make the broad-scale introduction of this energy-supply technology possible. Find out more interesting information on how solar photovoltaic and photovoltaic systems can do for you and your family.

Hydroelectric power is permanently available at larger rivers; biomass is storable. Both energy sources have therefore found their way into the existing worldwide energy supply picture, or will do so easily in the future.

Useful information renewable energy:
http://www.greenearth4energy.com/renewable_energy.html

Useful information solar photovoltaic:
http://www.greenearth4energy.com/solar_photovoltaic.html

Useful information photovoltaic systems:
http://www.greenearth4energy.com/photovoltaic_systems.html