ABOUT SOLAR 
For billions of years, the sun has poured out huge amounts of energy in several forms, including light, heat, radio waves, and even x-rays. The Earth, in orbit around the sun, intercepts a very small part of the sun’s immense energy output. On Earth, direct sunlight is available from sunrise until sunset, except during solar eclipses. Photovoltaic (PV) Solar collectors and modules are designed to capture some of the sun’s energy and change the radiation into more usable forms of energy such as heat or electricity. In fact, sunlight is the best source of heat and electricity, the two most important forms of energy we consume.
Solar Energy
On planet Earth, light from the sun is an incredibly important form of energy. Every day, the sun sends unimaginable amounts of energy into space. Some of this energy is in the form of infrared and ultraviolet light, but most of it is in the form of visible light. Some of this energy falls on the Earth, where it warms our planet's surface, drives ocean currents, rivers, and winds, and is used by plants to photosynthesize and make food and oxygen for us to breathe. Life on Earth depends 100% entirely on the sun! Without the sun, our entire human existence would freeze in a matter of weeks to months!
Photovoltaic (PV) Cells: The Science behind the Solar Panel and Solar Energy?
What do we mean by photovoltaics? First used in about 1890, the word has two parts: photo, derived from the Greek word for light, and volt, relating to electricity pioneer Alessandro Volta. So, photovoltaics could literally be translated as light-electricity. And that's what photovoltaic (PV) materials and devices do — they convert light energy into electrical energy (Photoelectric Effect), as French physicist Edmond Becquerel discovered as early as 1839.
Basically, the sun generates light to produce electricity through semi-conduction with materials. Since the discovery of photovoltaic (PV), the development has emerged as one of the most dependable energy producers of all time. Visible light can be converted directly to electricity by this space-age photovoltaic (PV) cell, also called a solar cell. Most photovoltaic cells are made from a crystalline substance called silicon, one of the Earth's most common and available materials. Solar cells are typically made by slicing a large crystal of silicon into thin wafers and putting two separate wafers with different electrical properties together, along with wires that enable electrons to travel between layers. When sunlight strikes the solar cell, electrons naturally travel from one layer to the other through the wire because of the different properties of the two silicon wafers.
A single cell can produce only very tiny amounts of electricity - barely enough to light up a small light bulb or power a small calculator. Nonetheless, single photovoltaic cells are used in many small electronic appliances such as watches and calculators.
Photovoltaic (PV) Arrays
To capture and convert more energy from the sun, photovoltaic cells are linked together to form photovoltaic arrays. An array is simply a large number of single cells connected by wires. Linked together in an array, solar cells can produce enough electricity to do some serious work! Many buildings generate most of their electrical needs from solar photovoltaic arrays, including the Toronto Healthy House, which gets 80% of its power from the sun.
Photovoltaic (PV) arrays are becoming a familiar sight along roadsides, on farms, and in the city, wherever portable electricity is needed. They are commonly used to provide power for portable construction signs, emergency telephones, and remote industrial facilities. They are also becoming popular as a way of supplying electricity for remote power applications such as homes and cabins that are located away from power lines, for sailboats, recreational vehicles, telecommunications facilities, oil and gas operations, and sometimes entire villages-in tropical countries, for example.
Why PV is important
Photovoltaics (PV) is an important energy technology for many reasons. As a solar energy technology, it has numerous environmental benefits. As a domestic source of electricity, it contributes to the nation's energy security. As a relatively young, high-tech industry, it helps to create jobs and strengthen the economy. As it costs increasingly less to produce and use, it becomes more affordable and available. And there are many more reasons, as we shall see.
Few power-generation technologies have as little impact on the environment as photovoltaics. As it quietly generates electricity from light, PV produces no air pollution or hazardous waste. It doesn't require liquid or gaseous fuels to be transported or combusted. And because its energy source - sunlight - is free and abundant, PV systems can guarantee access to electric power.
PV frees us from the cost and uncertainties surrounding energy supplies from politically volatile regions. And in addition to reducing our trade deficit, a robust domestic PV industry creates new jobs and strengthens the U.S. economy.
Why PV is Important to Energy Assurance
This remote water-level monitoring station uses photovoltaics to charge storage batteries that supply electric power to monitoring equipment. PV systems are ideal for disaster mitigation because they are modular and can be tailored to a wide range of electrical loads, sites, and uses. PV can play a critically important role in mitigating disaster through early warnings or remedial action.
The nation's current energy production and distribution infrastructure faces a number of physical threats because of its age and complexity, its potential vulnerability to national disasters, and acts of terrorism. Building and maintaining the systems that handle electricity, water, communications, and transportation are costly in terms of both dollars and time.
Parts deteriorate naturally, maintenance can be inadequate, and systems are often complex and interdependent, relying on each other to function properly. All these factors come into play during major disruptions. Moreover, systems designed for the expected loads and capacities of the 20th century are often inadequate for today's greater needs, leading to failures such as power outages.
Depending on where you live, natural disasters might include hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, fires, blizzards, or earthquakes. These unpredictable catastrophes can damage many of the components of our energy infrastructure. Think of ice storms that snap power lines, and earthquakes that cripple power plants. Human error can also be a culprit. Failure to monitor and maintain the proper pressure within a pipeline system used to transport oil, natural gas, or water, for example, can damage valves and gauges, requiring shutdowns that disrupt optimal flow.
And, as we've witnessed in several tragic events, it is an unfortunate fact of life that disasters can be intentional. Threats range from juvenile vandalism, to criminal sabotage by an individual, to well-planned terrorist attacks aimed at wreaking large-scale political, social, or economic havoc.
So how can PV strengthen America's energy security?
By providing highly reliable, low-cost electric power. By distributing energy throughout our systems in a more diversified way. By generating power that can be transported in portable systems to a disaster site, or anywhere where there is a crippling or dangerous grid power outage. By playing a larger, more active role in the energy mix when PV systems are built into new buildings. By using the free energy of the sun to free us from dependence on unreliable foreign sources of oil. The list goes on and on.
Solar Electricity in Everyday Use
Photovoltaic panels, like computers and other technologies, are getting cheaper and easier to buy. In fact, many people consider them a great alternative to gas-powered generators or connections to the regular electricity supply. Some countries such as Japan have encouraged businesses and communities to install solar panels on the roofs of new buildings to reduce the need for electricity from other sources.
Many homes and businesses have both a connection to the commercial electrical supply system (often called the "electricity grid"). The solar panels can provide all or most of the building's electrical supply during the day, and the grid supplies whatever other electricity may be needed during the night. In some cases, the panels make more electricity than is needed in the building, and the excess is sold to the power company. This results in the power company sending the home or building owner a credit towards their monthly electric bill!
In January, 2009, Federal tax laws make it more affordable to buy a Sunscape Solar PV Electric System with the IRS contributing 30% of the total cost of the installed price on energy-saving products and President Obama recently announced a mandate to equip all government buildings with PV Solar Systems to assist with the nation’s energy production and environmental problems. Solar is the cleanest and most sustainable form of energy on Earth, producing no emissions, requiring little or no maintenance and is an excellent financial investment.
What About Oil?
An editorial in 1979 declared: "According to the U.S. Congress's own Office of Technology Assessment, all known oil reserves will be exhausted by 2037." That was almost 60 years away at the time, and if we could put a human on the Moon in only 10 years, fixing our fossil fuel habit sounded like a piece of cake - if we could only find the will and desire to do it.
Today, 30 of those 60 years are gone, and we have made few, if any, major steps toward becoming fossil fuel-free. 2007 marked the first year when nearly all scientists, and even oil company executives, acknowledged that we have reached peak oil - or that we will reach it - within just a few years. Coincidentally, consensus about the reality of global climate change also finally coalesced in 2007, and it will probably be looked back on as the year when that consciousness reached the tipping point.
In Conclusion
Solar energy is a clean, infinite resource and a viable alternative to the expendable fossil fuels that currently pollute our planet, threaten the health of all living things, and intensifies the negative effects of global warming. Solar energy is here for us to use, and in utilizing such an plentifully available, nonpolluting resource is a responsibility we owe to the planet as well as ourselves, our children, and all future generations. By Going Solar, you can dramatically reduce your carbon footprint. Each solar kilowatt hour (kWh) offsets more than a pound of carbon dioxide (CO2). For example, by installing a 4kw PV system, the average size for a California household, you can reduce your carbon emissions equal to driving more than 12,000 miles in an average passenger car, or equal to the amount of C02 absorbed by ~1 acre of trees.
As the solar industry continues to grow and mature, and as our cultural consciousness continues to evolve, I remain hopeful that, once and for all, we will get things right in our homes, in our communities, in our country, and on our planet. Instead of forever being blamed for the excesses that put our planet on the dangerous path to destruction, we baby boomers can instead be viewed by our descendants as the generation that rose above our good fortune and decadence, finally saw the light, and embraced a vision that turned us all around while there was still a chance. We are indeed living on borrowed time. Let's turn it all around now, while we have this very last chance! An expertly installed Sunscape Solar PV System can generate all of the electricity needed to power your home. Sunscape Solar’s PV Systems will add value to your home while protecting you from rising energy costs. Your new PV Solar System simultaneously allows you to control your electric bill and your impact on the environment...