Solar Energy Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1250 words - 1

Solar Energy - Essay Example Solar panels alone in this country produced nearly 23 TW hours of power in 2012. This amount of energy is outstanding in comparison to other EU members or advanced economies, although it merely makes up for 3% of country’s overall power usage. Germany is working towards generating 66 GW of solar energy by the year 2030 by ensuring a yearly growth rate of 2.5 to 3.5 GW (Wheeland 2014). Even though Germany does not have extensive solar energy potential, it remarkably subsidizes its power systems. These subsidies guarantee their competence of the solar energy generated and used by the country. Germany has a strong input tariff structure comprised of small and large-scale solar PV frameworks capable of distributing surplus power generation to the utility network for revenue (Wheeland 2014). Italy was the second biggest generator and user of solar energy during the same year with an output of 16,361 MW. The United States came number four with an output of 7777 MW with 6200 MW of this output originating from the country’s solar PV industry. This output is a growth of 51% and 34% from 2013, which the suburban and utility sectors led in respectively (Wheeland 2014). This output is poised to increase by 20 GW by 2018. Twenty gigawatts of America’s solar energy output runs over 4 million average homes. By 2014, almost 645,000 American houses and enterprises were using solar energy because of previous year’s more than 195,000 solar power installations (Wheeland 2014). The usage of solar energy in the United States is an outcome of the growth of leasing electricity generated by solar stations. 2. The inverter is a device that converts DC into AC (alternating current), otherwise known as â€Å"conditioning† the electricity (Swanson 14). The inverter then conveys it to a gauge or electrical panel. 3. The gauge has two key functions. First, the gauge automatically conveys any surplus power generated by the solar panel to the