What percent of solar energy is used today?
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Answer:
Plants, on average, capture 0.1% of the solar energy reaching the Earth. The land area of the lower 48 United States intercepts 50 trillion GJ per year, equivalent to 500 times of the nation’s annual energy use. This energy is spread over 8 million square kilometers of land area, so that each square meter is exposed to 6.1 GJ per year. This results in potential biomass production of 6,100 GJ per square kilometer per year. Compared to the 0.1% efficiency of vegetation, roof installable amorphous silicon solar panels capture 8%-14% of the solar energy, while more expensive crystalline panels capture 14%-20%, and large scale desert mirror-concentrator heat engine based setups may capture up to 30-50%.
NOT enough, It's a great way of conserving energy more people should it.
Well, there are 2 types of solar energy, Photovoltaic, solar energy converted to electricity, and Thermal, solar energy converted to heat.
Photovoltaic devices use semiconducting materials to convert sunlight directly into electricity.
Solar thermal devices use direct heat from the sun, concentrating it in some manner to produce heat at useful temperatures. Currently, solar thermal devices do everything from heating swimming pools to creating steam for electricity generation.
In 2004 the total solar energy used was 0.063 quadrillion btu (British Thermal Unit), 0.006 of that energy was Photovoltaic.
i just did a yahoo search (what percent of solar energy is used today?) and came up with several good sites to check out for percentages.
1) http://www.solartoday.org/2004/may_june0...
2) http://www.solarenergy.org/resources/ene...
3) http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/clean...
4) http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=a0geu71itfjgjr...
5) http://rds.yahoo.com/_ylt=a0geu71itfjgjr...
YAHOO SEARCH: what percent of solar energy is used today?: http://search.yahoo.com/search;_ylt=a0ge...
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