OVERVIEW OF SOLAR ENERGY CONVERSION IN TURKEY

Abstract

According to global energy statistics, the amount of energy consumed increased from 8557 Million Tons of Equivalent oil (mtep) in 1990 to 13509 mtep in 2016. Research has shown that life span of 200 years of coal, 40 years of oil and 60 years of natural gas. Therefore, it is foreseen that fossil fuels will not be able to respond to the increase in energy needs and will fall behind energy consumption. because of this reason, it has been considere important to search for new energy sources to prevent future energy crises. Today, it can be said that this searching mostly focuses on renewable energy sources. Research suggests that renewable energy will constitute approximately 40% of total energy in the future. Although the importance of hydroelectric and wind energy from renewable energy sources has been understood much earlier, it is seen that the importance of solar energy has been realized in recent years. It is estimated that the highest increase in renewable energy sources between 2012 and 2040 in electricity generation will be in solar energy. Based on the years 2010 and 2018, while in 2010 was obtained 40,871 MW energy from the solar and 180,854 MW energy from the wind, but in 2018 was obtained 485,826 MW energy from the solar and 563,726 MW energy from the wind. According to these results, the energy obtained from the solar has increased approximately 12 times in the last nine years, while the energy obtained from the wind has increased approximately 4 times.