Have you ever gotten a brand new gadget like some super awesome computer and
powered it on for the first time with that satisfying noise? No, the other
noise that's better. And thought to yourself, why is it that we are using
electricity produced by, you know, power plants that are burning coal or nuclear
fishision reactors? What about the most abundant source of energy on the planet,
sunlight? Well, me too. And that's what this video is about. Sunlight is
literally everywhere and keeps everything on Earth alive in one way or
another. So it raises the question, so why has so little of our energy
production been from solar technology until recently? And what are the
advancements that are making solar useful for so much more than calculators
and those funnyl looking cars? Well, first it helps to know a little
something about how we actually convert sunlight into electricity. One way is
with those big solar panels made of lots of individual photovoltaic cells which
contain semiconducting materials such as silicon, not silicone. And when sunlight
hits a solar cell, it knocks some of the electrons in the silicon free, which
causes an electrical current to flow. Big solar power plants or farms take
this electricity and store it for later usage. Not very efficient. Or send it
directly to the grid. More efficient, but still not very efficient. More on
that later. The other major solar technology is called CSP or concentrated
solar power, which is really just a much bigger version of using a magnifying
glass to fry ants or whatever other twisted stuff you did as a kid. I don't
even want to know. These power plants work by using large mirrors or lenses to
focus sunlight. Really, it is just like that. Onto a series of tubes, not the
internet, other tubes, actual pipes that contain a special fluid that can use the
sun's heat energy to produce steam that drives a turbine. Both photovoltaics and
CSP were very minor players in the
energy market around the turn of the 21st century. But since then, energy
capacity from solar power has skyrocketed. In 2013, the world produced
10 times as much energy from sunlight as it did just 5 years prior. And that
number should continue to grow. In fact, the International Energy Agency has
projected that over 1/4th of the world's electricity supply will be solar by
2050. But what's behind this huge solar
renaissance? Well, some of it has to do with government policies and the state
of the energy market. But there's also been a lot of innovation in the actual
technology that's propelled solar to the forefront. One of the biggest challenges
since the advent of solar power has been efficiency. See, I said I would talk
about this later. A solar plant can't just convert all the light that hits it
into useful electricity. Some of it is reflected back or lost as waste heat,
which has made solar energy expensive. I mean, not to mention the land it has to
sit on and inefficient for a long time.
So, what we need are cheaper, more efficient materials such as thin film
cells, which are not only cheaper than traditional silicon, but are hundreds of
times thinner and now power some of the largest solar farms in the world due to
their low cost. There are also some other more experimental materials in the
works that promise to push efficiency to unprecedented heights. In the year 2000,
the most efficient solar cell in the laboratory was rated at just above 30%.
But in 2015, that number has risen to 46%.
So, while there's a long way to go before we can run the entire world like
one gigantic calculator, speaking of calculators, there are some amazing
private projects going on that allow you to determine if your area is optimal for
solar panel installations on your roof, which can actually help you lower your
personal electricity bills, even if it, you know, doesn't do much for powering
an entire city. The day might be coming pretty soon when your gadgets can run
cleaner and cheaper. Even if you opted for the, you know, Deluxo clothes dryer
that blacks out the whole neighborhood every time you set it to a drying cycle.
Speaking of setting up drying cycles, you know what?
Wow, this segue isn't going to work. Okay, clearly that segue wasn't going to
work. So, I'll bet Fresh Books. It's an online tool designed to make running
your small business or if you do like freelance work or whatever else easier
and more organized. So, you can uh put
your invoicing in there. You can keep track of your cash flow. You can track
your expenses. You can see a full history of an invoice including, you
know, useful details like if you've sent it to the client, if the client has
viewed it, and if the client has paid it, something they can do directly
through the online tool. And all you have to do is head over to freshbooks.com/techquicki
for a free trial and just try it out. I mean, here's something that's kind of
crazy. Freshbooks has had us doing these spots for them for months and we have
not received yet a single complaint from anyone using FreshBooks. Pretty cool,
right? So, if you're on your own business, give it a try. That's freshbooks.com/tequicky
and start using tools that make you feel like the boss that you are. So, thanks
for watching, guys. Like if you liked, dislike if you disliked. Don't forget to
check out our other channels. We got a great video over on Channel Super Fun
where we were like Nerf battling it up in the new office here. That was all
pretty sick. So, make sure you go and subscribe over there and subscribe over
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