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Alternative Energy News

Vice President Al Gore’s Noble prize winning movie ‘The Inconvenient Truth’ about global warming sounded alarm bells throughout the world and underscored a crying need for alternative energy sources.

Fossil fuels such as coal and oil provide most of the energy needs today. But their use is impractical and fast depleting natural reserves; hence alternative energy is a necessity and no longer an option. Here are some alternative energy sources:

Solar Energy sources are converted into alternative energy forms like thermal and electric energies. The sun provides alternative energy sources that are renewable, pollution free, available at any point on earth exposed to its rays, requires minimal maintenance and above all costs nothing.

Wind Power, another alternative energy source is also cost and pollution free but is intermittent and dependent on geographic location. Wind power is often harnessed in tandem with solar power as the two augment each other. When solar power is at its peak wind power is often minimal and vice versa. Both are low cost alternative energy sources.

Geothermal Energy from the internal heat of the planet is another alternative energy source. Geothermal energy can produce steam to run a steam turbine that generates electricity.

Tidal Power another potential source of alternative energy is relatively less exploited than other alternative energy sources. It works on the principle of the level differential between high and low tides which are harnessed through reservoirs to drive electricity-producing turbines.

Hydro Electricity uses the energy sources stored in water. It comes from the damming of rivers. The water stored in a dam is released at high pressure. Its kinetic energy propels turbine blades which are used to generate electricity. Hydro power has low maintenance costs.

Biomass is a popular form of alternative energy using waste bio products either directly for combustion or in the form of gassifiers. The use of biomass as an alternative energy sources can be used on a miniature scale such as for domestic cooking in remote areas.

The natural resources available on the planet for use as alternative energy have hardly been tapped and far exceed the world’s global energy requirement.

Examples of Alternative energy sources

The meaning of alternative energy source is the energy produced from non depleting natural resources i.e. alternative energy sources such ea sun, wind, tides, rain, geothermal etc. they can be used to meet the energy requirements of our homes, industries and cars too.

The various alternative energy sources available to us are as follows:

Biomass Energy

It is the most widely used source of alternative energy. It is the process of producing fuel by using biological materials like wood, sugarcane, switch grass and algae. It constitutes about 15% of the total alternative energy consumed in the world. Bio fuel is also included in biomass. It is used to make fuels that can be used in vehicles instead of non renewable sources like petrol and diesel.

The greatest advantage of using biomass is that it does not pollute the environment and therefore it can be used without any tension of greenhouse effect, global warming, and is one of the most abundant alternative energy sources.

Hydropower

Hydropower is another popular sources of energy. It provides about 5% of the total energy consumed around the world. The energy is produced because of utilization of the gravity of falling water. The water falls on the blades of the turbine with a force and alternative energy sources are produced with the help of generators.
The biggest dam that is being constructed to produce electricity is in china on the Yangtze River.

Solar energy

The production of electricity by harnessing the sunlight is known as solar energy. The suns rays are converted into electricity with the help of silicon wafers. The greatest advantage of solar energy is that it is available in abundance and as a result its conversion cost is the lowest. Besides this being one of the most abundant alternative energy sources, solar energy is available in almost all geographical locations.

Wind Energy

As the name suggests the process of producing power with the help of wing is called as wind energy. Any pace where the wind blows at an average speed of 11 kilowatts per hour can be a good place to install wind turbines. As the wind blows the blades of turbine rotates and produce electricity.

Geothermal Energy

The earth’s surface contains magma which is always sizzling at a temperature of 55 degrees Celsius. It produces a lot of heat as a result. This heat is harnessed to produce electricity by digging deep wells in the earths crust. The only and the biggest drawback of these types of alternative energy sources is that not all locations can be harnessed to get the benefits of this type of energy.

Thus we can conclude that all efforts should be made to capture the full potential of these alternative energy sources to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels or the non renewable sources. It is only then we can save ourselves as well as our coming generations from facing energy crisis as it is estimated that the fossil fuels will last for only about 50 more years. So time has come to act immediately.