Our Climate and the Energy Problem by Klaus Stierstadt

Author:Klaus Stierstadt
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783658383138
Publisher: Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Fachmedien Wiesbaden GmbH, part of Springer Nature 2022

K. StierstadtOur Climate and the Energy Problemessentialshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-38313-8_6

6. The Solar Energy Converters

Klaus Stierstadt1

(1)Faculty of Physics, University of Munich, Munich, Germany

6.1 Overview

Solar energy, which comes to us as light and heat, can be converted into other forms of energy in many ways. Humans discovered this about a million years ago when they learned to control fire. They could use it to heat and prepare cooked food. Then, about 10,000 years ago, they learned to harness the movement of wind and water, all indirect forms of solar energy. There were the first sailing ships, windmills and watermills. Today, we have a large number of technically sophisticated methods for harnessing solar energy. An overview is shown in Fig. 6.1a–c. Please delve into it a little, and you will see that the most frequently generated secondary form of energy is electrical, here referred to as “electricity” for short. There is a deeper reason for this: electrical energy is the easiest to transform into many other needed forms of energy, light, heat, cooling, motion, chemical energy, vibration energy, magnetic energy, etc.

Fig. 6.1The use of solar energy in nature and technology. The useful energy forms are outlined twice. (a) primary processes, (b) direct use via a temperature difference, (c) indirect use via the movement of wind and water.

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