E-Book

Solar power

By

TAMARAPU SAMPATH KUMARAN

About the Author:
Mr T Sampath Kumaran is a freelance writer. He regularly contributes
articles on Management, Business, Ancient Temples, and Temple
Architecture to many leading Dailies and Magazines. His articles are,
popular in The Young World section of THE HINDU
His e-books and articles on nature, and different cultures of people
around the world are educative and of special interest to the young.
He was associated in the production of two Documentary films on Nava
Tirupathi Temples, and Tirukkurungudi Temple in Tamilnadu.

Acknowledgement to:
Google for the inputs and photographs and Scribd.com for hosting my e-
books.
- Tamarapu Sampath Kumaran
The Aditya is one of the principal deities of the Vedic classical
Hinduism, belonging to Solar class.

The relationship between Indians and the Sun is as ancient as Indian

history. Sun is one of the main Vedic God- Surya, a name which many
Indian parents still name their son after. Konark temple in Odisha, also
known as the Black Pagoda and the Chath festival in Bihar symbolizes
the deep reverence Indians across millennia have for the Sun. In fact, the
reverence is so deep that the Yogic Asanas targeted for various body
parts are combined in the form of Surya Namaskar to pray to the Sun.
The sun has played a huge role in Indian art, culture, and spirituality.

A major God in
ancient Egyptian religion, is identified primarily with the midday sun. In
later Egyptian dynastic times, Ra the ancient solar deity was merged
with the God Horus, as Ra-Horakhty.
Though almost every culture uses solar motifs, only a relatively few
cultures (Egyptian, Indo-European, and Meso-American) developed
solar religions. All these groups had in common and a well-developed
urban civilization with a strong ideology of sacred kingship. In all of
them the imagery of the sun as the ruler of both the upper and the lower
worlds that he majestically visits on his daily round is prominent.
The sun is the bestower of light and life to the totality of the cosmos;
with his unblinking, all-seeing eye, he is the stern guarantor of justice;
with the almost universal connection of light with enlightenment or
illumination, the sun is the source of wisdom.
These qualitiessovereignty, power of beneficence, justice, and
wisdomare central to any elite religious group, and it is within these
contexts that a highly developed solar ideology is found. Kings ruled by
the power of the sun claimed descent from the sun. Solar deities, gods
personifying the sun, are sovereign and all-seeing. The sun is often a
prime attribute of or is identified with the Supreme Deity.
The sun was one of the most popular deities, however, among the Indo-
European peoples and was a symbol of divine power to them. Surya is
glorified in the Vedas of ancient India as an all-seeing god who observes
both good and evil actions. He expels not only darkness but also evil
dreams and diseases. Sun heroes and sun kings also occupy a central
position in Indian mythology There is a dynasty of sun kings,
characteristically peaceful, that is quite distinct from the warlike moon
kings. In medieval Iran, sun festivals were celebrated as a heritage from
pre-Islamic times. The Indo-European character of sun worship is also
seen in the conception of the solar deity, drawn in his carriage, generally
by four white horses, common to many Indo-European peoples, and
recurring in Indo-Iranian, Greco-Roman, and Scandinavian mythology.
During the later periods of Roman history, sun worship gained in
importance and ultimately led to what has been called a solar
monotheism. Nearly all the gods of the period were possessed of solar
qualities, and both Christ and Mithra acquired the traits of solar deities.
The feast of Sol Invictus (Unconquered Sun) on December 25 was
celebrated with great joy, and eventually this date was taken over by the
Christians as Christmas, the birthday of Christ.
The most famous type of solar cult is the Sun Dance of the Plains of
Indians of North America. In the pre-Columbian civilizations of Mexico
and Peru, sun worship was a prominent feature. In Aziec religion
extensive human sacrifice was demanded by the sun gods,
Huitzilopochtli and Tezcatlipoca. In both Mexican and Peruvian ancient
religion, the Sun occupied an important place in myth and ritual. The
ruler in Peru was an incarnation of the sun god, Inti. The King Dasaratha
of Ramayan belongs to Surya vamsam solar race.

Before human species discovered fire, the only sources of light were the
sun and the moon. The vital role that the sun plays in life on earth has
been recognised and celebrated by virtually every culture in human
history. All over the world, ancient people from Egyptians in Africa, and
the Aztecs and Mayans in the Americas, all the way up through Greeks
and Romans in Europe revered the sun, and in India personified and
worshipped our stars as a deity. Given the immense abundance and the
usefulness of its energy, it was only a matter of time before our interest
in the sun moved from the metaphysical to the practical. While we now
think solar power as being relatively a new field of study, the truth is
that human beings have been harnessing the power of sun for thousands
of years.
The first people known to have implemented the use of solar energy on a
large scale were the ancient Egyptians, who used it to heat their homes.
They designed and built their homes so that the buildings stored up the
suns heat during the day and then released it at night. Their building
technique not only kept their homes warm at night but also helped
regulate a cooler temperature indoors on hot days. Romans and Native
Americans both used similar technologies to heat their homes as well as
other types of buildings like roman bathhouses.

In the 3rd century BC the Greeks made

history not for using solar energy for domestic comfort but as a weapon
of mass destruction. It is recorded that a Roman naval force was sailing
to sack the Greek citadel of Syracuse. With the help of the inventor
Archimedes, the Greeks are reported to have used highly polished metal
shields as mirrors to amplify and focus the rays of the sun and thereby
set fire the advancing ships.

Early Use of the Sun

Solar Architecture in Ancient China (6000 BC -)
Six thousand years ago Neolithic Chinese villagers had the sole
opening of their homes face south. They did this to catch the rays
of the low winter sun to help warm the interior. The overhanging
thatched roof kept the high summer sun off the houses throughout
the day so those inside would stay cool. Two thousand years later
the Chinese began to formally study the movement of the sun
throughout the year in relationship to the earth. Knowledge
gained from these studies stimulated Chinese urban planners to
construct the main streets of towns to run east to west to allow
every house to look to the south to catch the winter sun for
supplementary heating. Over the millennia Chinese cities
followed such planning and still today the Chinese favor a south-
facing home.

Solar Architecture in Ancient Greece (500 BC-100 BC)

Socrates was outspoken about the value of building with the sun
in mind for the comfort of the occupants. Aristotle also taught his
students the value of designing houses to make maximum use of
the winter sun and to keep the house in shade during the hotter
months. Archaeological digs have confirmed that the ancient
Greek builders followed the advice of these sages. Retrofits in
Athens followed by whole cities such as Olynthus, Priene, Delos
and many others, as well as rural dwellings, show that solar
architecture became ubiquitous in Greece and its surroundings for
centuries.

Roman Solar Architecture (100 BC-500 AD)

Romes greatest architect Vitruvius saw solar houses while on
duty as a military engineer in recently conquered Greece. When
writing his great work On Architecture, he emphasized proper
solar orientation for buildings and bath houses. From literature of
the time it appears many followed Vitruvius instructions. Baths
 were especially popular among the Romans but demanded a great
amount of heat. From the times of the early empire onward, most
faced the afternoon sun in wintertime when they had maximum
use. They also had their large windows covered with either
transparent stone like mica or clear glass, a Roman invention of
the 1st century ACE, one of the great breakthroughs in building
and solar technology. Transparent materials like mica or glass,
the Romans discovered, acts as a solar heat trap, admitting
sunlight into the desired space and holding in the heat so it
accumulates inside. Facing structures to the winter sun became so
popular in Roman times that sun-right laws were passed, making
it a civil offense to block ones access to the south.

Burning Mirrors (1000 BC-1800)

Three thousand years ago the Chinese discovered how to make
concave reflectors to turn sunlight into fire. Many centuries later,
around the 5th century BCE, the Greeks independently developed
such solar devices. Both used them to kindle wood for cooking.
When natural scientists of the renaissance learned of these
inventions, many envisioned using them as the ultimate weapon,
burning whole armies and fleets with concentrated power of the
sun. The sketch books of Leonardo show that the great Italian
technologist had great solar ambitions to use concave mirrors for
industrial heating. People from London to Paris watched in awe
as experimenters concentrated rays of the sun to melt metals and
vitrify glass in seconds.

Heat for Horticulture (1500s-1800s)

With the decline of the Roman Empire, the use of transparent glass
all but disappeared. Glass was not used again to trap solar heat until
the wealthy citizens of the Age of Discovery wanted to enjoy
oranges and other fruits from Asia and the New World. South-
facing greenhouses became popular to trap solar heat to encourage
 the growth of such exotic plants in the colder climate of Europe,
unduly frigid due to the advent of the Little Ice-Age. Sometimes
a greenhouse was attached to the south-side of homes living room
or library, transforming the dull interior into a vibrant and
warm space where people would congregate. On sunny winter days
the doors separating the greenhouse from the home were opened
to allow sun-warmed air to circulate freely into the formerly chilly
interior.

Solar Hot Boxes (1767-1800s)

The increased use of glass during the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries reawakened the awareness of its ability to trap solar heat.
In 1767, the Swiss polymath Horace B. de Saussure set out to
determine how effectively glass could trap solar heat. Saussure
built a rectangular box from wood, insulated with black cork and
its top covered with glass. He placed a similar but smaller glass-
covered box inside. When he tilted the box toward the sun, the
inner box rose above the boiling point of water. Because of the
large amount of solar heat the device retained, it became known as
a Hot Box. The hot box became the prototype for solar thermal
collectors used to heat water and homes. Saussures hot boxes also
modeled with amazing precision the dynamics of global-warming
with the glass acting as an atmosphere soaked with excess carbon
dioxide stopping solar heat absorbed by the earth from re-radiating
into the

Sun is moving beyond its traditional roles like being the source of
spirituality, to being the power source for millions of Indians.

The need for solar energy not only arise from selfish greed but also from
humans moral obligation as a species. Status quo in the energy industry
is certainly not acceptable. Climate change is more challenging to India
as it has a densely-populated coastline vulnerable to rising sea levels due
to global warming, monsoon dependent food economy and vulnerability
to natural calamities. Hence, the need of ordinary Indians to move
beyond Surya Namaskar to adopt solar energy as a primary source of
energy which is possible with home solar installations, cannot be
emphasized enough.
Solar Energy
And while nowadays we tend to think of solar power as being a
relatively new field of study, the truth is that human beings have been
harnessing the power of the sun for not just hundreds, but thousands of
years.

The discovery of photovoltaics happened in 1839 when the French

physicist Edmond Becquerel first showed photovoltaic
activity. Edmond had found that electrical current in certain materials
could be increased when exposed to light. 66 years later, in 1905, we
gained an understanding of Edmonds' work when the famous
physicist Albert Einstein clearly described the photoelectric effect, the
principle on which photovoltaics are based. In 1921 Einstein received
the Nobel Prize for his theories on the photoelectric effect.

Solar cells of practical use have been available

since the mid 1950s when AT&T Labs first developed 6% efficient
silicon solar cells. By 1960 Hoffman Electronics increased commercial
solar cell efficiencies to as much as 14% and today researchers have
developed cells with more than 20% efficiencies. 20% efficient means
that out of the total energy that hits the surface of a solar cell, about 20%
is converted into usable electricity.
 The cumulative amount of clean
electricity generated by solar panels over the past 40 years is soon to
complete repaying the energy debt required to make the 230 gigawatts
(GW) worth of solar currently installed around the world, according to a
new study which addressed concerns of how much fossil fuel energy was
being used to produce this new clean energy.