Below is the list of solar energy power facts I compiled from different sources
- There are systems which use solar energy for heating and not just generating electricity
- One square meter of solar panels saves about $0.06 per sun hour.
- One square meter of surface receives the same amount of heat from the sun as 0.07 gallons of oil fuel gives out in burning.
- Solar panel system costs about $50,000 to install if you want to cover 100% of house electricity consumption
- Solar system costs around $2,000 to cover 100% of house heating
- You have to face your panels south if you live in the north hemisphere and north if you live in a south hemisphere
- Fossil fuels is a preserved sun energy, since they consist mainly from dead plants which use sun’s energy to grow.
- Leonardo Da Vinci designed one of the first solar concentrators in attempt to use solar energy for industrial purposes
- In just one hour more sun’s energy falls on Earth that entire population uses in a year
- Third world countries today is the largest growing market for solar energy, because many of those countries are located in areas with a lot of sunlight and they use way less energy than citizens in developed countries.
- Cost for solar generated electricity constantly falls unlike the one generated by fossil fuels
- Atmosphere and clouds absorb and reflect about one third of the Sun’s energy which reaches the Earth
- Modern day solar panels convert only about 15-20% of sunlight to electricity, the rest is wasted, thus if 1 kWh of sun energy falling on a solr panel it will only generate about 150 watts per hour
- Japan consumes about half of all produced solar panels
- Germany generated 6,200 GWh of solar electricity in 2009 and it gets about 1.1% of it’s total electricity consumption from solar power plants
- Largest solar power plant is located in Mojave Desert in North America, it consists of solar reflectors which cover the area of 4 square kilometers
- Around 2 billion people around the world don’t have access to electricity
Let me know if you know more of solar energy power facts which deserve to be included in this list. I did not put any stats about the Sun, the surface and core temperature, size and distance from Earth, because I don’t think it’s really relevant to solar generated power which this site is about.