Interesting facts about Renewable Energy

A few interesting facts regarding Renewable Energy have been compiled here in:

Solar Energy

1. Solar Energy is the biggest source of energy on planet earth
2. The energy that the earth receives from the sun in just one hour is more than humans consume in a year
3. Just past the atmosphere, the strength of the solar radiation received over a meter square area is almost constant. Its value is 1357 Watts/meter square and is termed as the solar constant.

Hydropower

1. Hydropower is one of the cheapest sources of renewable energy today.
2. The power produced by large scale hydropower plant can be less than 2 cents a kWh.
3. Fishes like salmon that spawn upstream of the river can be given access across a dam by providing fish ladders.
4. Small scale run of the river hydropower projects are more environmentally friendly compare to large scale dams.
5. The biggest dam in the world is the Three Gorges Dam in Yiling District, China. The dam spans the Yangtze river and has a capacity of 22500 MW.

Wind Power

1. Wind power has been in use since 2000 BC and the first devices to utilizes wind energy were made in China and Persia.
2. China has the largest installed capacity for wind power, followed by USA, Germany and Spain.
3. Modern wind turbines produce 15 times more energy than their counter parts in the 1990.
4. Wind turbines is currently the fastest growing renewable technology in the world.

Wave and Tidal Energy

1. One of the factors that govern tidal energy is the moons gravitational force.
2. Among all the other forms of renewable energy, only Tidal energy is strength  can be predicted years in advance for any given time.
3. Old Tide Mills found on Spanish, French and English coastal towns can be dated back to 8 th century.
4. Wave and Tidal power can produce more than 800 times more energy compared to wind turbine of the same size because of the higher density of water.
5. Wave energy landing on a certain area  can be predicted by using weather satellites.