Energy & Green Tech

The grid can handle more renewable energy, but it needs some help

The grid needs to change. To electrify everything from vehicles to heating systems to stovetops, the U.S. grid must expand by about 57% and get more flexible, too. Solar and wind energy are the renewables most likely to dominate ...

Energy & Green Tech

Cooking with solar ovens in sub-Saharan Africa

Although sub-Saharan areas may seem perfect for solar ovens, many people use wood or coal as the main source of energy for cooking, especially in areas that are not connected to the power grid.

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Solar wind

The solar wind is a stream of charged particles—a plasma—ejected from the upper atmosphere of the sun. It consists mostly of electrons and protons with energies of about 1 keV. The stream of particles varies in temperature and speed with the passage of time. These particles are able to escape the sun's gravity, in part because of the high temperature of the corona, but also because of high kinetic energy that particles gain through a process that is not well-understood.

The solar wind creates the Heliosphere, a vast bubble in the interstellar medium surrounding the solar system. Other phenomena include geomagnetic storms that can knock out power grids on Earth, the aurorae such as the Northern Lights, and the plasma tails of comets that always point away from the sun.

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA