Alternative Energy Sources - The Key To The Future
Our society consumes more and more energy everyday. We live in an industrialized world. This is how we can explain why our reserves of natural gas, oil and other energy sources have rapidly decreased. This obliged the society to be more and more interested in alternative energy sources.
There are different types of alternative energy sources that we use nowadays. Solar, wind, geothermal and electrical energies are the most important sources. Each of these comes with its own advantages and disadvantages. The major advantage of these sources is that they are inexhaustible sources. They use water, wind or the sun, so we can say that they will never finish.
Excluding the nuclear and geothermic energy, all the energy that the mankind uses is produced in one way or another by the action of the Sun.
The wind was first used centuries ago. People used it to power pumps, forges or to irrigate the crops. This is how the term of "windmill" firstly appeared. We can use the energy of wind by building many windmills. Each of these tall towers has a propeller on the top. When the wind blows the propeller turns a generator which produces energy. It's important to know that these towers are built in places where more wind is. The more towers, the more wind.
Geothermal energy is the energy that we produce with the help of the earth. We all know that in the centre of the Earth the temperature is very high. Even a few kilometers down, there are about 250 degrees Celsius. How we use this? We drill holes down, and the steams come up. Then they are purified and used to drive turbines, which drive electric generators. But as I've said before the main source is the Sun. There are three major methods to transform the Sun's energy into electricity. First, there are the Solar Cells. Firstly build for satellites, there are nowadays common for our tiny calculators. The second way is using the light. We can use some panels on our roof to heat the water, or we can simply use the pipes. They are painted in black, and from that point the heat does its work. The third method is by using the Solar Furnaces. It is quite simple. With the help of hundreds of mirrors, we concentrate the Sun's energy into a small space and produce high temperatures.
Alternative energy sources hold the key towards the future, without them, our planet will eventually head into a blackout, or back to the middle Ages.