The sun has produced energy for billions of years. Solar energy is the solar radiation that reaches the earth. This energy can be converted directly or indirectly into other forms of energy, such as heat and electricity. It is used for heating water for domestic use, space heating of buildings, drying agricultural products, and generating electrical energy.
Solar energy supplies electricity to several hundred thousand people around the world, provides employment for over ten thousand and generates business worth more than one billion dollars. In the future, the pace of change and progress could be even more rapid as the solar industry unlocks its hidden promise.
The benefits of solar power are compelling: environmental protection, economic growth, job creation, diversity of fuel supply and rapid deployment, as well as the global potential for technology transfer and innovation.
The underlying advantage of solar energy is that the fuel is free, abundant and inexhaustible. The total amount of energy irradiated from the sun to the earth’s surface is enough to provide more than 10,000 times the annual global energy consumption. Yet these benefits remain largely untapped; most energy decisions today overlook solar power as a modular technology that can be rapidly deployed to generate electricity close to the point of consumption. Phasing in solar photovoltaics therefore requires a shift from centralized to decentralized power production, offering far greater control to individual consumers.