A flight over the Nile into the darkness of the night. See how our solar panels track the Sun and get ready for the next sunlight? We get all our energy on the International Space Station from solar power
STORM CLOUDS FROM SPACE This image was taken by one of the crew members aboard the International Space Station, and shows a night view of storm clouds over Southern California. The white blotch to the right of centre in the image is early morning lightning, while the yellow patchwork area in the middle of the clouds are the city lights of Los Angeles and San Diego. -TEL http://www.nasa.gov/content/storm-clouds-over-southern-california/ Image: NASA
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Solar energy in the Gobi Desert
China is currently the world's fastest growing market for solar energy, and these two images of solar panels in the Gobi Desert, captured by the Advanced Land Imager on the Earth Observing-1 satellite in 2009 and 2015 respectively, demonstrate the country's growing demand for solar energy in just six years. The first solar farms were built on the outskirts of the town of Dunhuang in Gusan Province by the National Energy Administration (NEA) in 2009, but with limited urban space, the NEA decided to expand their solar farms into the Gobi Desert to take advantage of the abundant sunlight and empty land. After the NEA installed 8 GW worth of solar panels in 2014, China became the world’s largest market for solar energy, with a total capacity of more than 28 GW. In 2015 alone, China is reportedly already increasing solar panel capacity by at least 5 GW.
However, that 28 GW of solar power constitutes only 2.1% of China’s total energy production, with coal still the leading energy source. Solar energy is also notoriously difficult to harness efficiently, and China is still figuring out how to more effectively transmit solar power to more populated regions in the south using appropriate power grid systems. Even so, the solar panel industry remains a booming field, mainly due to growing domestic and international demand for greener energy, especially in Japan in the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe.
-DC
Photo credits: http://1.usa.gov/1IuWv7I
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Why solar energy is easier said than done: http://bit.ly/1fS4y7P http://bit.ly/1hBuQnH
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