USA: A Place in the Sun



07/09/2015 4:19 PM


The US administration unveiled plans for a large-scale expansion of the solar energy use and making it available primarily to the poor and disadvantaged. By 2020, the United States will have installed equipment for recycling solar energy with capacity of 300 MW, which is three times more than planned earlier.



July 7, the administration of US President revealed plans on solar energy major expansion and making it available to all citizens. This initiative is one of the steps to deal with climate change, and should, according to the administration, reduce spending on electricity costs.

According to the White House, solar energy in the US is now developing so fast that the solar energy conversion equipment’s number, installed every three weeks of the last year, was equal to the countrywide number in 2008, and the pace of job growth in this industry is ten times higher than in any other. But the new initiative provides opportunities for the growth even greater: it is planned that by 2020, the country will have had the equipment to convert solar energy into electricity with a total capacity of 300 MW, whereas according to the same plans that were adopted in 2013, the total capacity was 100 MW.

The solar panels and other necessary equipment will be primarily installed on residential properties built with federal funding and is designed for low-income and poor people. In addition, the authorities intend to make the procedure of obtaining loans on favorable terms (up to $ 25 thousand) easier for homeowners that want to install the solar equipment. Also, the state’s aim is to help with access to solar energy to homeowners who do not have space on the roof to install solar panels. Altogether, $ 520 million, provided by charitable organizations, investors, state governments and municipalities, will be allocated for this program. In addition, 75 experts in the field of solar energy will be trained under the program by 2020.

Solar energy worldwide gets to a new level and became quite promising. This natural resource is already actively used in the United States, Japan and many European countries. This demand stems from the fact that solar radiation is an inexhaustible natural product, in contrast to gas, oil or coal. Results of preliminary calculations reveal that the use 0.0125% of solar energy may help satisfy the actual requirements of the global energy industry.

This type of energy can be used in agriculture, aviation and automotive industry, as well as in the space and in the household sector. An important factor is that the solar energy consumption is completely silent and clean. In addition, the cost of energy-to-power conversion is minimal, while the prices of extraction and creation of fuel and lubricant products are literally huge.

source: rawstory.com
 


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