When you buy a house in Raleigh, North Carolina, or New York, you’re paying for a solar panel installation.
But that’s not the only way to get the same benefit, says Chris Ruppel, executive director of the International Solar Cooperative Network, or SolarCoop.
If you’re looking for a way to cut your carbon footprint and contribute to the environment, he says, you could look at a solar power plant as a way of accomplishing that goal.
“It’s not a carbon-negative technology, so there’s no carbon emissions,” he says.
“It’s just a solar installation that converts the sun’s energy into electricity, and it does it by generating electricity that’s free.”
The solar panels installed on homes and businesses are mostly made out of recycled glass and aluminum, but Ruppels team at SolarCoops has been looking into the potential of using materials like carbon-recycled glass and materials like aluminium, zinc and aluminum to make solar panels.
SolarCoopers is a cooperative of over 100 solar power projects across the U.S., and Ruppelman says the majority of them are built with solar energy.
“We’re talking about tens of thousands of solar panels that are on the roofs of houses and businesses all across the United States,” he explains.
“And we’re trying to figure out how to use these technologies for these kinds of solar energy projects that are being proposed all over the world.”
Ruppel says that while the solar panels are not technically solar-powered, they are renewable, and they’re also low-cost.
He says that even with the cost of solar-power systems in North Carolina around $300 a kilowatt hour, they can provide a net reduction of electricity demand by about 1,000 megawatts, or one-quarter of the total amount of energy needed to produce the same amount of electricity.
SolarCoops says that most of the power generated by these solar power plants are used for cooling and cooling water, and Rennels team has partnered with several local and national universities to create research and development opportunities around the solar-panel technology.
One of the most popular solar-energy technologies is the thermal solar system, which uses sunlight to generate electricity.
The thermal solar systems are also used to produce water.
Rupples team at the SolarCooper Network has created a pilot project with the University of Wisconsin-Madison to explore the thermal-solar-system technology.
SolarCooper’s goal is to put solar panels on every roof in the U, which is a goal that Ruppenselt says he thinks has been difficult to achieve.
He believes that in the long run, solar energy will be a major source of clean energy for the entire world, and he hopes that the Solar Coopers team will help build the solar power industry in the United Kingdom, Australia, South Africa and other countries.
“In many places, we’re still not even looking at the idea of solar power,” he adds.
“I’m hoping that we’ll be able to start to see it here.”
In the meantime, Ruppelfels team is working on other ways to make renewable energy more affordable.
He wants to find ways to increase the use of the solar energy by using solar panels to create renewable energy.
He’s also working on ways to reduce the cost and pollution of the electricity that is generated by solar energy systems.
“I think it’s important that solar energy is part of a sustainable future for the planet, and we need to keep the lights on,” he said.
“The solar power system can make that possible.
It can make the energy cheaper, more sustainable and it can also make it easier to make more solar energy in the future.”
Watch a demonstration of solar arrays at SolarPower’s facility in North Charlotte, North Dakota, as well as a demonstration at a different solar farm in Nevada, which shows the use and cost of the technology.