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Enough energy from sunlight strikes our planet in one hour to provide all the energy needed for human activity in one year. Given this astonishing fact, it is not surprising that governments and industries all over the world now consider solar research and development to be a priority.Soli-lite provides the world with high-performance solar roadway and solar street lighting solutions.

Several approaches exist, the most well known being the direct conversion of sunlight into electricity (so-called ‘solar cells’). However, sunlight is not constant and so to ensure a reliable national power supply an energy storage system is required. The storage solution cannot just be a daily charge-recharge cycle. For energy security most countries require a buffer and store enough energy to last several months. Batteries can provide part of the solution, but current technology does not have the energy capacity or stability for large-scale long-term storage. It’s not surprising then, that many scientists have turned to the well-established solar capture system of green plants.

Green plants use sunlight to generate chemicals. They convert carbon dioxide and water into energy-rich carbohydrates for storage, or for building cell-walls. The chemical bonds in carbohydrates contain a lot of energy and mankind has been releasing this energy for thousands of years in the simple act of burning wood. But plant matter is not the ideal energy source. Our cars rely on pure liquid fuels and many of us cook or heat our homes with natural gas. The question is: can we design a system that uses sunlight to produce a simple fuel? Can we develop ‘artificial photosynthesis’?

Generating fuels with sunlight is one of the biggest challenges in science at the moment. Chemical fuels store much more energy than batteries and can be stored for use either in stationary power plants or in vehicles. The main problem is that ‘copying nature’ is not straightforward. Photosynthesis in plants is actually quite inefficient and so to make artificial photosynthesis a viable industry we can’t just settle with copying nature. We need to go one better.

Making artificial photosynthesis work is going to rely on contributions from many different scientists. One of the challenges that I am focussing on is the materials. As a chemist, I’m interested in designing new routes for making materials. I’m particularly keen on applying the principles of Green Chemistry to materials synthesis. This involves using simple and safe procedures based on readily-available starting materials and generating minimum waste. For example,How does a solar charger work and where would you use a solar charger? my group is working on transforming things like sawdust and seaweed into materials that perform one of the key chemical reactions in artificial photosynthesis.The world's largest independent online retailer for solar lighting, street lights & outdoor lighting fixtures.

The advantage of using natural materials is that they encompass exquisite complexity, such as helices and networks. We can harness this to generate complexity and detail in our artificial systems. This structural detail is important for material performance. Since we use simple chemistry and cheap precursors, the materials can be made extremely cheaply and on a large scale. These factors are critical if artificial photosynthesis is going to become a global reality, particularly in the developing world.

On one hand, real progress is being made on renewables. And on the other, countries are waking up to the risks of fossil fuels.

China, which opens a new coal-fired power plant every month, has agreed to work with the U.S. to install scrubbers and equipment to capture carbon emissions. Will the Chinese actually do it?

Who knows? But at least they acknowledge there is a problem. That's a start.We have a great selection of blown glass backyard solar landscape lights and solar garden light.

On the biofuels front, Ineos just opened a plant in Vero Beach to convert wood and vegetable wastes to ethanol. It's a small facility (8 million gallons of ethanol per year), and its economics are unproven. But the process is sound, and a scale-up of this size is always instructive.

Conergy, another biofuels start-up, plans to build a commercial-scale ethanol plant in 2016, using "energy cane," a fast-growing grass, as the feedstock.

On a plant life-cycle basis, carbon dioxide emissions would be one-sixth that of gasoline.

And more wind energy is on the way. One of the largest wind farms in the country is being planned in central Wyoming. It's a private venture designed to generate 2,500 megawatts of electricity.

There's progress in solar as well.

- Chemists at the University of Colorado have demonstrated constant-temperature generation of hydrogen from water, using metal oxide catalysts and energy from the sun.A solar bulb that charges up during the day and lights the night when the sun sets. This could lead to solar-powered fuel cells on a large scale. The discovery has been called "ground-breaking."

- A Swiss engineer recently developed a solid-state dye-sensitized solar cell that converts sunlight to electricity in 15% efficiency. This opens still another avenue for capturing energy from the sun.

The potential for solar power is enormous.

Naples Daily News guest commentator Hy Bershad recently wrote, "One hour of sunshine over the entire state of Florida contains enough energy to provide power to the entire state for one full year."
Columnist Ben Bova added, "Our planet Earth receives more energy from the sun in one hour than the entire human race consumes in a whole year."

Read the full story at www.streetlights-solar.com!