Solar Energy and Solar Wind: what do they have in Common?
You hear virtually nothing about the solar wind but a lot about solar energy or solar power these days. It has been blasted all over the radio and now TV, at least here in Southern California.
The last year or so in 2015 and so far in 2016 I’ll bet we received at least a few hundred calls soliciting solar systems.
We also had well over a dozen people knocking on our door promoting their solar power installation. If you read my previous posts about solar power you know I wanted to use solar power/solar energy. I wanted to replace my total dependence on Southern California Edison (SCE), our electric company. In fact, the only electric company for millions of Southern Californians.
April 2018 Solar Update
It is April 9, 2018 now. We’ve received far less calls and people coming to our home trying to sell us solar. That’s since about 2016. However now there are so many solar installations all around us. There are some new tract homes a few minutes from us and ALL the homes in the tract, as far as you can see (it is in the hills), have solar cells on their roofs.
So solar sales people have done a great job selling solar systems. Even so, when we get results from our electric company (Southern California Edison [SCE]) I notice we use only slightly more electricity that our neighbors. Many of them have solar systems. The one-page report is something new the past few months.
Costs have come down about $20,000 from the solar system estimate we received initially several years ago. That’s my estimate, but if you live in California you can check solar system costs here. Although solar costs have come down, I’m not so sure we’d save much money with solar. I also believe some of the rebates for solar are gone. The last time I checked the State of California had just about run out of rebates for people who had solar systems installed.
That could have all changed, however. If you are interested in Solar be sure to check if the Federal Government is still giving energy rebates to homeowners. Same goes for your state. One other thing. I’ve been looking at real estate and see having a solar system might boost the value of a house.
Seems like quite a few high priced homes come with solar systems (that are already paid for). I would guess paying $30 – $40,000 for a solar system isn’t too big an expense if you can get maybe *00 up for your home. That is if solar helps to get a buyer.
Solar Power was a Bust
Well as it turned out solar power was a bust and not for me. I really wanted to do something for keeping the earth green. What about solar wind?
You don’t hear much about it unless you are a physicist or maybe a student majoring in physics. Then there are people like me that thrive on almost anything technical. Also involving physics or astronomy, which involves an awful lot of physics.
Voyager 1 and 2 are now in the ‘Heliosheath’ – the outermost layer of the heliosphere. That’s where the solar wind is slowed by the pressure of interstellar gas. Image credit NASA: Click image to enlarge
The Sun Powers Solar Energy and the Solar Wind
About the only thing in common between solar energy and the solar wind is both are deriving their source from the sun. Actually that’s really a major thing in common, even though we are about 93 million miles away from the sun.
If you have read or heard on TV that Voyager I spacecraft was nearing or about at the point where the solar wind diminishes to almost nothing. Interstellar space is right next door to the spacecraft. It was 18 billion kilometers (11 billion miles) from the sun last August, in its journey since its launch in 1977.
A fairly closeup view of a solar eruption or solar flare on the sun.
I saw an announcement about the solar wind when Voyager would enter it. I just had to read all about it. Basically it is about the solar wind and why it gets hotter in space. All normal thinking says it should be getting cooler as it flows in space.
In addition to that, it speeds up, when it definitely shouldn’t be doing that either. Apparently the source of the solar wind is causing these unusual phenomena to occur.
The Solar Wind
The Solar Wind energy source has finally been discovered. I won’t bore you with the details, which you can read, if interested. They were published in NASA Science| Science News on March 8, 2013.
Using data from an aging NASA spacecraft, researchers have found signs of an energy source in the solar wind. It has caught the attention of fusion researchers. NASA will be able to test the theory later this decade when it sends a new probe into the sun for a closer look.
The discovery was made by a group of astronomers trying to solve a decades-old mystery: What heats and accelerates the solar wind?
The solar wind is a hot and fast flow of magnetized gas that streams away from the sun’s upper atmosphere. It is made of hydrogen and helium ions with a sprinkling of heavier elements. Researchers liken it to the steam from a pot of water boiling on a stove. The sun is literally boiling itself away.A solar flare on the Sun
“But,” says Adam Szabo of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, “solar wind does something that steam in your kitchen never does. As steam rises from a pot, it slows and cools. As solar wind leaves the sun, it accelerates, tripling in speed as it passes through the sun’s corona. Furthermore, something inside the solar wind continues to add heat even as it blows into the cold of space.”
The two Voyager spacecraft continue to operate, with some loss in subsystem redundancy, but still capable of returning science data from a full complement of VIM science instruments. Image credit: NASA. Click image to enlarge.
Old Equipment and Solar Power
It’s amazing that there is still a spacecraft up there with reels of tape still sending data back. Useful data, the source of the information unraveling the source of the solar wind. That sounds like when I started programming a few years before launch of Voyager I and Voyager II. Both took off for parts unknown (after their solar system voyage).
Back to solar power – I am hopeful the day will come soon that the cost of solar power will be low enough to convert to it. Right now my electric bill is not high enough to justify it. Does about $52,000 cost over 18 years for solar power sound like a savings to you?
It would also help if SCE would do like some other electric utility companies. Some pay you for the excess energy (electricity) you feed into their grid. Edison has some sort of non-monetary compensation. But according to what I read solar power fed back to SCE only gets some credit and it expires at the end of the year.
I am not totally sure about this sort of rebate and it may have changed. So if anyone needs to correct me please enter a comment. Better yet contact me from the contact form.
