Exploring the Potential of Solar Power

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Introduction and History Solar power is a promising renewable energy source that poses a fair amount of challenges in its implementation. A major challenge towards future, widespread implementation of solar power is solar power’s intermittency. Solar power does not provide energy as regularly and as steadily as nonrenewable energy resources, a hindrance in more widespread adoption and implementation of solar power. Securing energy for America’s energy is not an easy task, but solar power can help to greatly soften the blow, which is why it is worth investigating how solar energy’s intermittence can be a hindrance to more widespread implementation of solar power production as well as how we can mitigate this intermittence. After briefly discussing the history of solar power, we will briefly take a look at various solar power generating technologies being utilized. We will then analyze insolation levels around the continental United States as well as the optimal and suboptimal locations for solar power production in the US. We also take a look at where solar power generation is currently concentrated and the reasoning behind the installation or lack thereof of solar power generation technologies in previously unutilized locations. Once we have finished analyzing solar power geographically, we can analyze it technically through the context of the national grid. One of the most important subtopics will be how and why the current electrical energy delivering infrastructure in the US may not aptly suited for intermittent energy like solar power as well as possible solutions such as the Smart Grid and different types of energy storage. We will find that the Smart Grid and thermal energy storage form the backbone of our recommended solu... ... middle of paper ... ...mber 2013 . U.S. Department of Energy. The Smart Grid. 28 November 2013 . U.S. Energy Information Administration. How much of our electricity is generated from renewable energy? 9 October 2013 . —. Monthly Energy Review October 2013. October 2013. 6 November 2013 . —. State-Level Energy Consumption Estimates and Estimated Consumption per Capita, 2010. 2011. 27 November 2013 . Upton, John. World’s biggest solar thermal power plant fired up in California. 25 September 2013. 28 November 2013 .

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