Solar Power Storage

We have come to rely completely on electricity.  We use it in almost everything we do we can't "live" without it  

In the past, before electricity, there were lanterns for light and matches and wood for heat. Those were the only options people had.  Over the years, appliances, which made for less manual labor and more free time, became the norm.  Washing machines, dryers, dishwashers and the latest in stoves no longer needed wood for fuel.  Electricity became the new household fuel. 

 Today we have the worry of saving energy or paying out the "whatever" to the power companies.  Our energy is created by non-renewable resources, which will cause the depletion of these resources slowly and over time and pollute the environment along the way.  We need to find an alternative to the way we power our lifestyles and we also need to store the energy that we create. 

Solar energy  is and always will be tied to how good we are at storing solar power.  Storage batteries and inverters are an answer and are improving in both cost and effectiveness every day. 

Thermal mass systems such as large, insulated solar hot water heaters are easy to do. This type of storage only needs to store heat energy a short period of time, until the sun comes out again.  Thermal mass can hold heated water at night and even heat your home long after the sun goes down or on cloudy days when the sun doesn't peak through the clouds at all.  These drawbacks need to be worked on because there is no extensive long-term storage capability for solar power directly just yet.  

Other types of material can be used to store solar heat.  Some examples of this type of storage include: 

Paraffin wax inside of a storage tank.  When the paraffin wax is cold it is solid but when it is heated it is a liquid that can help hold heat for a very long time without cooling it down.  As the paraffin wax cools it becomes hard which can hold the heat in longer. 

Molten Salts are an effective way to store solar energy because it allows the temperatures to remain hot without being flammable and is cost effective.  The salt mixture heats up to above the boiling point of water and then is used to make steam. 

Take A "Click" On Our Solar Power Energy Solutions

Rechargeable Deep-Cycle Batteries can be a great way to store energy.  This type of storage allows the power source hold the solar energy collected by PV panel for use at night or on cloudy days.  Lead acid batteries are the more common battery used for this type of storage.  Although very heavy these batteries are a proven technology and are cheap if you can get older batteries to re-condition. 

As you see there are several ways that we can store natural solar energy we just need to learn how to make these methods more practical and efficient.  We took people to the moon 40 years ago - somehow these problems don't see as large.