if we talk about the energy coming out of the fossil fuel gives us several advantages and disadvantages, fossil fuels are also available easily and is very much flexible to use anytime but it also causes pollution, infrastructure involved in harnessing the energy but what about the renewable energy sources, there are many sources available so out of those which is the best energy sources, to answer this question we need to divide each energy sources into different categories such as land required, amount invested, maximum energy converted to electricity, environmental impacts etc.
out of the many renewable energy sources wind and solar are most common and popular so lets try to find out of these two which one would be the best,
Solar Power
lets try to find out that how much solar energy is efficient and is it really worth using it, the efficiency of solar panel can be taken as sunlight input and electricity output considering both as energy in the same units keeping this in mind average efficiency of solar panels sits around 15% max to max some more efficient panels can give 20% efficiency, whereas from non-renewable energy sources we can get 90% of efficiency.
now lets have a look how solar panels are manufactured to get 90% of efficiency, for doing this solar panels should be derived from quartz-silicon dioxide. refining quartz to silicon to polysilicon requires intensive energy usage and can produce toxic compound, therefore this includes high production cost.
on the other hand technology of producing thin film solar cells includes less cost and less energy however this includes the release of toxic chemicals which includes carcinogen metals which is not worth producing but still some manufacturer wants to produce it.
thus if we compare the solar panels of 15% with 90% they are worth to be produced as they dont involve huge cost and toxic chemicals.
Wind Power
wind power accounts for 8% of total energy in the united states, as compared to solar wind power is little bit noisy but the efficiency can go from 30% to 50% so this clearly wins the range from solar panels in efficiency category.
in the pie chart at the top shows that wind turbines accounts for more than 60% of operating and manufacturing cost but as compared to solar panels manufacturing they dont produce toxic metals. compared to coal for which the efficiency is 29% with pollution on land, wind wins the race for best energy sources.
share your opinion what do you think which is the best energy sources wind, solar or coal.
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