Solar power Technology

Sustainable Technology

The term, sustainable, is used for sustainable development and sustainable design but, for my essay, for my lecturers, technical context, I will be writing about sustainable technologies. Sustainable technology is also known to as “green technology” or “eco-technological” which both of them means that it is meant to be good for the environment and the earth an all ways possible, this is how sustainable technology helps: to use up so much more less energy, less more resources, do not double resources and do not directly or indirectly put pollution into the environment and world and can also be recycled or re-used at the end of their useful usage. Technology, on the other hand, means that things that can be made for people to know, how to use and also to use it to deal with and adapt to the environment. In the society today, humans use technological things for science and even engineering.
Sustainable technology, wich is, engineering contribution to the sustainable development through technical design, which then in takes into consideration of the complete life cycle. The complete life cycle is:
The production conception - which is the beginning of the design
Prototyping – puts together all the models which works, to then test different aspect of the design also to show ideas or other features and gather feedback for the user.
Manufacturing – is when the tools and activities to make things for the product.
Sales – the money you get for stuff tahst be given and services provided.
Consumption – using the product since buying until its none usable any more.
Companys, which run products that are technically sustainable, have a moto, which is the three P’s, “planet, people, profit.” This moto, which means that it helps many people around the world wich includes the, especially the earth, beacause it is environmentaly friendly or green as some people like to say, the people of earth because it give them the chance to help the earth and good for money which keeps us happy, and then profit, which helps the companys with financial situations but also gives them a better chance to better themselves in anyway such as, making better resources and easyer equipment. Sustainable technology uses high or maintenance demands that to make it unsuitable as an “appropraite technology”. Cleaner fossil fuels; Hydrogen; fuel cells; distibuted generation can all be said to be at a low carbon energy technologies. But, not reuseable or renewable, this technology offers big potential to meet the UK’s eco and environmental policy of aims over the long term. The government have teken the serious actions by now to enable the development of these technologies. Development, demonstration and basicly deploy the technologies will then help realise the governments targets of 60-70% of CO2 reduction by 2050.

For my essay i will be writing about the sustainable technology on the solar power heating in japan. In japan there are areas that are very cold most of all the year around, such as: Hokkaido. This is the northen island of japan. Hokkaido has a very popular tourism rate, because of its cold weather in the winter. This brings many tourists to go on skiing holidays and spend time at they’re resorts. Because of the cold weather, heating has to be put in to the accomodations for the tourists, and for years they were using using gas, oil, electricity or wood to make heating possible, but because of this, these fuels are making the environment worse by producing more green house gases in to the atmosphere, which then, is making the world warm up, this is called global warming. The more greenhouse gases being produced, the more they get trapped in our atmosphere and then in turn, traps the heat that has been sent from the sun in our atmosphere also. The gases that are produced are; water vapour, carbon dioxde, methane, nitrous oxide and ozone. Therefore, because of this, the resorts at Hokkaido, started to use solar power heating, this is also called solar technologies. Solar technologies rely entirely on the absorbing the suns energy. Solar radiation which goes on the surface of the floor of the earth with a max energy power of 1 K/Wps. The actual ammount of radiatiton that the sun produces depends on location , hours of sunlight and also cloud cover. Solar radiation comes directly from the sun and it reaches our earths outer atmosphere direct, the clouds then could scatter the light, but both direct or scattered readiation are used fine but the the scattered cannot be studied properly. When the earth revolves around the sun, the earth, when its winter in japan is tilted at an angle of 25 degrees. The angle of the earth is dependable on the strength of the sun for the solar radiation. There are two types of technology solar power heating system that are used in cooler climates, therse are the flat panel and the evacuated tube. The flat panels are normaly cheaper per unit area and theyre common featur is a a plate thats black, thats surfaced across the area of the tank, the plate is black because black absorbs heat, therefore it can heat up the water inside. The actually surface maybe a selective coating witch absorbs almost all light but because of this it doesn’t radiate so well. The heat will then be transferred to through pipes painted black (absorb the heat, still), which are connected to the plate. A glazing material insulates the hot plate while letting the sunlight through. Layers of insulation behind the hot plate, reduces heat loss to the rear. The Evaluation tube on the other hand is totally different. It collects its heat through a type of vacuum, just like a flask for keeping hot tea in, this then which totally eliminates losses by conduction and convention. The vacuum of the evaluation tube is maintained by a sealed glass tube, which the sunlight is then absorbed by a coating on the collector plate inside the tube. The heat that’s been made is then may be removed by direct circulation by a heat pipe, that contains a refrigerant. This then clears in the tube, and boils down at the cold end, sending the sending the heat into water circulating there. The evaluation tube is meant to be more efficient because of it lower losses and it is meant to be better on colder and more cloudier days. 80% is the efficiencies solar thermal systems can achieve.

Advantages:

· Brilliant for using for lower powered items such as lights or for calculators.
· Solar power is totally silent, no noise is made when its being used.
· Solar power is a renewable, until the sun dies, solar power will still be useable.
· Solar cells require very little maintenance.
· No wires to be worrying about and very easy to install.

Disadvantages:

· Solar panels, they can be very expensive.
· Solar power cannot be used at night, as it needs the energy of the sun.

In my opinion, I think that people all over the world should use solar power for some technologies in they’re home, as its very green, you wouldn’t have to pay for bills, also it is easy to use it you wouldn’t have to do anything to the system except install it.
The sun is 149.6 million km (93 million miles) from earth, but the energy we get from it is immence, we should all make the most of it, and use the yellow star to help us have a green plannet!

References

http://www.viridiansolar.co.uk
http://www.dti.gov.uk/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainable_technology#Sustainable_technologies