As we seek ways to reduce our dependency on fossil fuel, with new technological advances and greater environmental awareness, solar power plants and systems will hopefully become commonplace throughout the world. Accumulating the power of the sun and converting it to solar power energy we can use for our every day needs is achieved through several methods.

The two most popular methods for generating solar power energy are the concentrating solar power system and the photovoltaic system (PV). The PV system cam convert light from the sun directly into electricity, and is most often used for industrial and residential applications. The Concentrating Solar Power (CSP system) uses the sun's heat in lieu of fossil fuels to generate heat that fuels a traditional power plant. The CSP system could potentially provide sufficient electricity for a whole city. There are three methods by which a Concentrating Solar Power System generates a large amount of energy: the power tower system, the dish engine system, and the parabolic-trough system.

Solar panel installation costs can vary greatly. For example, you may see higher costs if you plan to install custom solar panels in for a house located in a densely populated area, whereas roof-mounting traditional box-style solar panels on a building located in a remote or sparsely populated area will cost a bit less. If you prefer a more discreet, aesthetically pleasing appearance, building materials are now available with the solar cells built right in. Your roofing, awnings and windows become the solar power energy collectors that provide your power.

Solar panels can be mounted in a rooftop setup in addition to ground and pole mounts. The ground and pole mounts offer additional solar power energy design flexibility especially when your structure is in the shade part of the day. Solar panels can also be equipped with mechanisms that allow them to track the path of the sun throughout the day maximizing their exposure to the suns rays.

Parabolic-trough systems focus the sun's heat by use of long mirrors. The heat then travels to piping that has been built into the mirror's center, through which oil is pumped which carries heat away from the mirrors. Heat from the oil is then used to heat up water to generate steam and power a generator.

Much like the parabolic-trough system, the dish-engine system uses a reflective parabolic type dish to magnify the sun's energy to heat fluid. However, in the dish-engine solar system, the heated fluid expands to move large pistons that power an electric generator.

Power tower solar systems for solar power energy production require an array of mirrors to focus the sun's heat onto a tower mounted receiver. Molten salt flowing through the receiver is heated by the collected solar energy and used to heat water which then creates the steam to power a generator.