We've used the Sun for drying clothes and food for thousands of years, but only recently have we been able to use it for generating power.

The Sun is 150 million kilometres away, and amazingly powerful.

Just the tiny fraction of the Sun's energy that hits the Earth (around a hundredth of a millionth of a percent) is enough to meet all our power needs many times over.

In fact, every minute, enough energy arrives at the Earth to meet our demands for a whole year - if only we could harness it properly.

Currently in the UK there are grants available to help you install solar power in your home.

Visit www.solarpanels.co.uk to see examples of solar products.

1 Solar Cells
(really called "photovoltaic", "PV" or "photoelectric" cells) that convert light directly into electricity.

There's an infographic here to explain how they work

In a sunny climate, you can get enough power to run a 100W light bulb from just one square metre of solar panel.

This was originally developed in order to provide electricity for satellites, but these days many of us own calculators powered by solar cells.

People are increasingly installing PV panels on their roofs. This costs thousands of pounds, but if you have a south-facing roof it can help with your electricity bills quite a bit, and the government pays you for any extra energy you produce and feed back into the National Grid (called the "feed-in tariff").

2 Solar water heating, where heat from the Sun is used to heat water in glass panels on your roof.

This means you don't need to use so much gas or electricity to heat your water at home.

Water is pumped through pipes in the panel. The pipes are painted black, so they get hotter when the Sun shines on them. The water is pumped in at the bottom so that convection helps the flow of hot water out of the top.

This helps out your central heating system, and cuts your fuel bills. However, with the basic type of panel shown in the diagram you must drain the water out to stop the panels freezing in the winter. Some manufacturers have systems that do this automatically.

Solar water heating is easily worthwhile in places like California and Australia, where you get lots of sunshine. Mind you, as technology improves it's becoming worthwhile in the UK.

Here's a more advanced type of solar water heating panel.
The suppliers claim that in the UK it can supply 90% of a typical home's hot water needs from April to November. 

This "Thermomax" panel is made of a set of glass tubes. Each contains a metal plate with a blue-ish coating to help it absorb solar energy from IR to UV, so that even in diffuse sunlight you get a decent output. The air has been removed from the glass tubes to reduce heat loss, rather like a thermos flask.

Up the back of the metal plate is a "heat pipe", which looks like a copper rod but contains a liquid that transfers heat very quickly to the top of the glass tube. A water pipe runs across the top of the whole thing and picks up the heat from the tubes.

Find out more at www.solarsense-uk.com/thermomax.php

3 Solar Furnaces use a huge array of mirrors to concentrate the Sun's energy into a small space and produce very high temperatures.

There's one at Odeillo, in France, used for scientific experiments.
It can achieve temperatures up to 3,000 degrees Celsius.

Find out more from wikipedia...

Solar furnaces are basically huge "solar cookers".

A solar cooker can be used in hot countries to cook food. This one is in the UK, making tea and coffee, although it does take a long time!