Buildings might get covered in solar panels in the near future
Today we can see a lot of innovations happening around energy generation. For the needs of today's world, we need lots of energy and imagine if we can generate all the energy with the help of clean energy instead of burning fossil fuels. Energy creation is the sector that keeps changing every year with discoveries and sees a lot of improvement every year. In the future, there will be even more innovations in energy generation.
One of the biggest challenges with solar panel implementation is that it consumes a lot of space and we have to make the land available only for solar panels and that will prevent the land from being used for other purposes. Using it on top of buildings and other places might be good but again that has its challenges.
Solar panel innovations
In the last few years we can see some great improvement in the way solar panels are manufactured and at the same time the efficiency has also improved. The size has reduced and we can extract more power from smaller panels. This is a great thing. Apart from these innovations, there have been innovations around what materials are used to create solar panels. It is still a heavily researched sector but we can find new methods. Some companies have also patented many innovations and we are yet to see them in the market.
One of the inspiring things that I saw was a solar panel implementation that acted like a sunflower plant. Along the direction of the sun, the panels move every day based on where the sun is located. This way it was able to absorb more light from the sun increasing the efficiency.
Where can we use solar panels?
It is not mandatory that we have to use solar panels only on the rooftop of a building. I'm able to see many companies creating and promoting alternative ways to install solar panels. Some panels get implemented as fences around the house that can generate electricity when exposed to sunlight. The next thing is using solar panels on top of vehicles where at least a bare minimum of energy is produced that can be used by the vehicle. Mostly these vehicles are hybrid and operate in both solar power as well as fossil fuels.
There is a big research going on in finding ways to reduce the cost of solar panels. It is believed that solar panels can be manufactured at the cost of ordinary glass. I remember reading it somewhere but mass production is not happening yet. If that happens, I'm sure all the window frames and building walls will have solar panels in it generating enormous amount of power. These days we have tall buildings and most of them are already covered with glass windows. If we can make cheaper solar panels, I'm sure we will be able to install them in our building windows and use them to generate electricity.