Alternative Energy
...s have adopted this technology to develop wind energy resources. Design improvements have helped increase the world's wind energy generating capacity by nearly 150 percent since 1990. In 1997, for example, the world market for wind energy reached billion.One major disadvantage of wind mills is that it is not so efficient as other power generation technologies. Hydroelectric power is the energy produced by running or falling water that is used for driving machinery, especially for generating electricity. The development of hydroelectric power requires storage lakes, dams, bypass canals, and the installation of large turbines and electric generating equipment. Worldwide, hydroelectric power represented 19 percent of the total energy generated in 1998, the most recent year for which data are available. In many countries, hydroelectric power is the dominant source of electric power. Canada, the largest producer of hydroelectric power in the world, generated 340.3 billion kilowatt-hours in 1999, about 60 percent of the nation's electric power. Hydroelectric-power generation in the United States increased from about 16 billion KWH in 1920 to 305.6 billion KWH in 1999, this is only eight percent of total consumption. Solar power is the energy from the sun that is converted into thermal or electrical energy. The direct collection of solar energy involves artificial devices, called solar collectors, that are designed to collect the energy, sometimes through prior focusing of the sun's rays. The energy, once collected, is used in a thermal process or a photo-electric, or photo-voltaic, process. In th...