Over the years solar power has been viewed by many people as the ideal energy source. There are a number of advantages that do make solar power an excellent option. Once you get all of the materials built and in place you are basically getting free energy from the sun. This is a huge advantage in a world with rapidly rising energy prices. The other great advantage of solar power is that there are no emissions. With all of the concern over the damage that the emissions from fossil fuels are doing to the environment this is a huge benefit. It is becoming clear that alternative energy sources are going to be necessary and solar power is widely considered the most likely candidate.

Solar power basically refers to using the energy of the sun as an energy source. There are a couple of ways that this can be done. One option is to simply use the heat of the sun to generate energy. This can be done by direct heating as with a stirling engine or it can be done by focusing the sun’s rays to boil water and then use the steam to turn a generator. In order for this to work a large amount of sunlight needs to be focused into a small area. The advantage however is that you can run a regular power plant with focused sun rays as the energy source so that reduces the infrastructure cost.

The other option for generating solar power is to use solar cells to turn the sun light directly into electricity. These are more widely used in applications where the focusing technology would be impractical. This would include things like powering vehicles or small scale uses like an individual home. Long term solar cells are probably the better option since they are cheaper to operate once they are installed. However the high cost of installation has limited there use so far.

Despite all the promise that solar power has there are a lot of issues that need to be overcome if it is to be widely adopted. The biggest problem is that solar power isn’t always available. Even in the best case scenario the sun can only be used as a power source during daylight hours. Bad weather will reduce the useful time even further. This means you either need to figure out a way to create and store excess power when the sun is shining or you have to have an alternative power source for when the sun isn’t shining. Right now solar power is used mainly as a supplement to the electricity generated by other means however if it is ever to become the main power source this obstacle needs to be overcome.

The other big problem with solar power is cost. Although the power is basically free once the equipment is installed the cost of installation is very high. In fact it is so high that even with free power generation solar power can’t compete on price with other sources. This will need to be overcome if solar power is to have a future and if we want to see ourselves driving solar powered cars in the future.