Gone are the days when solar energy was captured only on the roof tops of your houses and solar energy companies needed whole lot of real estate to harness energy from the sun. Technological advancements have led the sector to reach heights that were unimaginable some years back. Solar energy now can be excerpted from more sources than what we can think of.
Image source : Viteos
In order to reduce the limitation of using land as a base to juice energy from the sun, a Swiss company “Viteos” has come up with a brilliant idea. Their invention of floating islands of solar panels on Lake Neuchâtel depicts the insight of their approach. Each of the 25m diameters of the islands would encompass 100 photovoltaic panels for the next 25 years. There is more to solar usage in the sea. Since the first solar sail in shanghai in 2010, the shipping industry has been starving for the technology which can reduce their cost incurred on fuel. Recently “TURANOR planet solar” yatch completed a voyage around the globe deducing the energy of the sun. With emerging flexibility and innovative technologies, solar energy may soon become the fuel of choice for bigger sized ships as well.
Image source: www.gizmag.com
Solar energy in the near future can prove to be of great use when it comes to airborne vehicles and equipments. Last year “Solar Impulse” broke the record for sun fuelled flight on its journey across America. Companies such as “Silent Falcon” have started research and development on solar powered drones that can be launched by hand and can stay aloft up till 14 hours.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=If8MODnvjhw
While scientists are still working on technologies and equipments that would enable the human kind to extract sun’s energy from the outer space in order to avoid the limitations caused by earth’s atmosphere and climatic changes; “Titan aerospace” has come up with a solar powered atmospheric satellite. The drone can stay in the upper atmosphere for five years and return back to surface in one piece. On the other hand Japanese scientists are also working on building an array of solar cells on moons orbit to gather the energy from the sun and beam it back to the earth.
With advancement such as these, the world may see a greener tomorrow soon.