Gadgetory

have you ever gotten a brand-new gadget like love some super awesome computer and powered it on for the first time with that satisfying no no the other noise that's better and thought to yourself why is it that we are using electricity produced by you know power plants that are burning coal or nuclear fission reactors what about the most abundant source of energy on the planet sunlight well me too and that's what this video is about sunlight is literally everywhere and keeps everything on earth alive in one way or another so it raises the question so why has so little of our energy production been from solar technology until recently and what are the advancements that are making solar useful for so much more than calculators and those funny-looking cars well first it helps to know a little something about how we actually convert sunlight into electricity one way is with those big solar panels made of lots of individual photovoltaic cells which contain semiconducting materials such as silicon not silicon and when sunlight hits a solar cell it knocks some of the electrons in the silicon free which causes an electrical current to flow big solar power plants or farms take this electricity and store it for later usage not very efficient or send it directly to the grid more efficient but still not very efficient one that later the other major solar technology is called CSP or concentrated solar power which is really just a much bigger version of using a magnifying glass to fry ants or whatever other twisted stuff you did as a kid I don't even want to know these power plants work by using large mirrors or lenses to focus sunlight really it is just like that onto a series of tubes not the internet other tubes actual pipes that contain a special fluid that can use the sun's heat energy to produce steam that drives a turbine both photovoltaics and CSP were very minor players in the energy market around the turn of the 21st century but since then energy capacity from solar power has I rocketed in 2013 the world produced ten times as much energy from sunlight as it did just five years prior and that number should continue to grow in fact the International Energy Agency has projected that over 1/4 of the world's electricity supply will be solar by 2050 but what's behind this huge solar Renaissance well some of it has to do with government policies and the state of the energy market but there's also been a lot of innovation in the actual technology that's propelled solar to the forefront one of the biggest challenges since the advent of solar power has been efficiency see I said I would talk about this later a solar plant can't just convert all the light that hits it into useful electricity some of it is reflected back or lost as waste heat which has made solar energy expensive I mean not to mention the land it has to sit on and in efficient for a long time so what we need are cheaper more efficient materials such as thin film cells which are not only cheaper than traditional silicon but are hundreds of times thinner and now power some of the largest solar farms in the world due to their low cost there are also some other more experimental materials in the works that promise to push efficiency to unprecedented heights in the year 2000 the most efficient solar cell in the laboratory was rated at just above 30% but in 2015 that number has risen to 46% so while there's a long way to go before we can run the entire world like one gigantic calculator speaking of calculators there are some amazing private projects going on that allow you to determine if your area is optimal for solar panel installations on your roof which can actually help you lower your personal electricity bills even if it you know doesn't do much for powering an entire city the day might be coming pretty soon when your gadgets can run cleaner and cheaper even if you opted for the you know deluxe Oh clothes dryer that blacks out the whole neighborhood every time you set it to a drying cycle speaking of setting up drying cycles you know what Wow this Segway isn't gonna work okay clearly that Segway wasn't gonna work so about FreshBooks it's an online tool designed to make running your small business or if you do like freelance work or whatever else easier and more organized so you can put your invoicing in there you can keep track of your cash flow you can track your expenses you can see a full history of an invoice including you know useful details like if you've sent it to the client if the client has viewed it and if the client has paid it something they can do directly through the online tool and all you have to do is head over to freshbooks comm slash tech quickie for a free trial and just try it out I mean here's something that's kind of crazy FreshBooks has had us doing these spots for them for months and we have not received yet a single complaint from anyone using FreshBooks pretty cool right so if you're on your own business give it a try that's FreshBooks comm slash tech quickie and start using tools that make you feel like the boss that you are so thanks for watching guys like if you liked dislike if you disliked don't forget to check out our other channels we've got a great video over on channel super fun where we were like nerf battling it up in the new office here that was all pretty sick so make sure you go and subscribe over there and subscribe over here and leave a comment dvf suggestions for future paths as possible' videos just like this one thank you and I'll see you again next time