One of the grand challenges that engineers have to face will be finding alternative sources of energy in terms of electrical energy for the growing population. Currently, our main source of energy comes from fossil fuels which include oil, natural gas and the coal. However, these natural fuels are non-sustainable and they are depleting at an alarmingly rate. Furthermore, since the start of industrialisation, the use of fossil fuels has worsened the problems of air and water pollution. Hence, the alternative source must be sustainable and environmentally friendly. Solar energy is one of them. Although the sun’s energy can produce much more commercial energy that human normally use, there are many obstacles which hinder us from optimising the sun’s energy. Firstly, the efficiency of the solar cells is very low. They are not able to convert all the sunlight captured into electricity for commercial usage. Engineers have to work on different methods such as applying nanotechnology to enhance the performance of solar cells. Secondly, the manufacturing cost to produce solar cells is very high. This means that each individual will be heavily charged as using solar energy is expensive. Therefore, new components can be used to modify existing solar cells which can help to reduce the production costs. Lastly, engineers must provide efficient ways to store solar energy. This is necessary because sunlight is not available during night time and cloudy days. Thus, solar energy must be tapped and stored for further use. This introduced the invention of fuel cells where hydrogen is used as a fuel. Making use of solar energy, hydrogen can be produced by electrolysis of water. The combustion of hydrogen produces energy and water, which is an environmentally clean by-product. All in all, our ability of using solar energy can be further optimised with the help of engineers. By limiting the mentioned obstacles to the minimum, solar energy can then be economically used as the main source of energy in place of the fossil fuels.
References
National Academy Of Engineering Of The National Academies. (2008). Grand Challenge for
engineering: Making solar energy economical. Retreieved September 21, 2008, from
http://www.engineeringchallenges.org/cms/8996/9082.aspx
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2 comments:
It is evident that your constant use of linking words has kept your summary well-organized and with much clarity. You have made no mistake in prepositions (your most common grammatical mistake)! So, keep it up...
Nice summary. The important details of the article are all summarised without deviating from the actual meaning. A interesting article anyway.
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