Archive for February, 2010
Power Your Own Home On Solar Energy
February 28th, 2010 | 
Author: 
The sources of energy that we have relied upon for so long, such as gas and coal, are in ever-decreasing supply and it’s becoming more and more important to find alternatives that are renewable. Of these, solar energy is more and more being hailed as an ideal energy solution.
And solar power is gaining popularity as a source of home energy. Thanks to all the research and development, it is now accessible to anyone. An average family can have their own home-made system, meeting their energy needs. It’s definitely not rocket science.
The materials used in putting these solar panels together, can be bought in the local hardware shop. And for anyone with a reasonable amount of DIY ability, it’s not a huge task to build one’s own system. All required work could be completed, with the final connection to the supply being done by an electrician.
Although the production of solar power is more suited to those areas that have high levels of sunshine, those high levels are not essential, all the time. It will work fine with medium sunshine levels. And the energy produced at sunny times can be stored in batteries for later usage if required.
It would be possible to build an energy-producing home solar system for $200 or less. That is a pleasant surprise to the many who have gone down this road. So you can absolutely rule out cost as a prohibitive factor.
More and more families are turning to solar power as they discover how easy it is to set up , and how it can be done on a small budget. And its not necessary to incorporate solar panels energy at the design stage of a house ” although this is preferable, it can also be added later.
As mentioned previously, the energy produced can be stored, if more energy is produced than required. Or you could actually sell it back to the electricity company, and watch your meter run backward! This is a reality for many families that are getting their power from solar energy.
There are many positive points that could be cited about solar energy, including the “clean, green” aspects of it. But the kicker has got to be the cost – both from the point of view of the low entry cost, and also for the ongoing savings that will be achieved. You could see a reduction of 80% (even 100%) in your energy bill.
if you are producing your own home solar power, you are helping in the great fight against global warming (and of course you are reducing carbon emissions). And once the system is up and running, the maintenance it requires is minimal.
The use of solar energy to generate electricity is a long-established reality. The uptake of home solar power systems is on the increase, and I believe that this trend is only going to continue.
Republished by Blog Post Promoter
Causes Of Land Pollution And Energy Facts
Current info about the causes of land pollution is not always the easiest thing to locate. Fortunately, this report includes the latest facts about solar energy available.
Solar energy is energy from the sun. When the sun is shining solar energy is being produced as it sends the heat radiating to the earth. Solar energy is as plentiful as daylight, as limitless as organic life itself, a fuel that comes free of charge and replenishes itself every time the earth rotates on its axis. Almost all energy, after all, is ultimately stored solar power: Oil, gas, and coal were born of the ancient sunlight that fed prehistoric animals and plants, the wind is set howling by the sun’s unequal heating of the atmosphere, and even a campfire draws its warmth from solar power trapped long ago through photosynthesis.
Wind and water have been used to power mills for centuries. Wind power is a totally renewable energy source with no greenhouse gas emissions, but due to its unpredictability, has problems integrating with national grids. Combined together, wind and hydrogen can cancel out their inherent defects and be an effective tool in the battle against carbon dioxide and global warming. Winds are rated in seven classes; higher class numbers indicate stronger winds.
See how much you can learn about the causes of land pollution when you take a little time to read a well-researched article? Don’t miss out on the rest of this great information.
Although HFCVs are much less efficient than BEVs, wind-HFCVs are still very clean and were ranked second among all combinations. Wind turbine designs have undergone dramatic changes since the first windmill structure invented in’88 by Charles F. Wind energy and tidal energy also feature among the many and varied articles. These discuss the principles behind these alternative energy sources, the need to move away from fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emissions.
Windmills can also make power for your house by using the wind that turns a turbine to create power. The one problem with the windmills is that if there is no wind, the blades on the windmill won’t turn to create the power you need. Wind energy is one of the most widely used alternatives to oil in the world.
Renewable energy provides more jobs per unit of output and per dollar spent than conventional energies do. Economic woes and high unemployment rates influenced Spain’s’94 decision to invest in renewable energy. Renewable energy is no less reliable than energy generated from more traditional sources and using it does not mean that you have to change your lifestyle or your appliances. Using renewable energy can be as simple as using the sun for drying clothes or can mean taking advantage of more sophisticated renewable technologies, such as photovoltaic (PV) cell systems, which use the sun’s heat and light to generate energy, wind turbines or ground source heat pumps which extract energy from underground. Renewable energy is important for the environment as it produces little or no greenhouse gases. The exception is biomass which is considered as being ‘carbon neutral’.
If you’ve picked some pointers about the causes of land pollution that you can put into action, then by all means, do so. You won’t really be able to gain any benefits from your new knowledge if you don’t use it.
Sandra Creel is the author of this article. EnergySavingSite.info offers resouces on land pollution and the causes of land pollution. You may reprint this article provided this paragraph and all links are kept unchanged.
Republished by Blog Post Promoter
Help The Environment And Save Money With Solar Energy
More and more people are becoming concerned about helping the environment and at the same time, about saving money wherever they can, especially in today’s economy. As the cost of energy rises, more people are becoming aware of alternative energy sources, such as solar power.
Solar panels take one of the most renewable energy sources available to us and convert it to energy. It is one of the best and most environmentally friendly resources we have available. Green energy or solar energy is renewable. Today, most of our energy comes from a non-renewable source. Fossil fuels are non-renewable and therefore one day we will be left with depleted energy reserves and eventually none at all. Some estimates indicate that based on the earth’s current consumption rate, we could run out of fossil fuels in just a few decades.
Solar power is already widely used today. It has been used for years to power such things as calculators, but also in the last few years they are powering things like garden lights, road side construction signs and a number of other devices.
Renewable energy sources are the answer to a number of problems. Saving significant money on your home energy bills can become a reality with the use of the latest in technology and the non-polluting natural energy all around us. Powering your home with solar energy has the following benefits.
* Solar power is a renewable and green energy resource
* Solar power is non-polluting
* Once your solar power system is in place, it costs almost nothing to run
* Can reduce or eliminate your utility bill
* You will have power even during a power outage
* The utility company will pay you for any extra energy you produce
* With today’s easy access to information and technology it makes it much simpler to make solar panels yourself
* As your energy needs grow, you can simply add more solar panels
* The value of your home will increase
Green energy sources do not harm the environment or give off harmful by-products. The results from these energy sources are completely different than fossil fuels.
Can the use of solar energy really decrease your power bill? Utilizing renewable energy products in your home, you can dramatically lower your power bill, even by up to 80%! Homeowners who set their mind to it are now completely living off the power grid.
Installation of a commercially purchased solar energy system can be quite expensive. However, building your own solar panel system these days can be very easy and a whole lot less money. Over the last few years the technology has improved enabling the regular home owner to be able to build their own system cheaply and easily.
There are some really good How To guides available today on the internet. It is just a matter of finding the right one, with the best instructions. There are some guides that take you through the whole process with simple, easy to follow and understand instructions. You don’t need to be the handiest person to build your own solar panels. With the help of these guides you can build your own solar energy system for under $200 and complete it in just a weekend.
Saving money and protecting the planet are two of the things on people’s minds these days. Taking the time to build your own solar panel energy system is one of the greatest ways to help with both of these goals. The continual increase in the price of oil and electricity is a really good motivator for all of us to start doing more to conserve energy. The amount of money that you can save by utilizing our most readily available natural resource will amaze you.
Republished by Blog Post Promoter
Harnessing the Sun for Home Heat
We have grown accustomed to having heat at the push of a button. This heat though too often is generated through inefficient methods. A much more energy efficient,not to mention cost effective, way to heat our homes,schools, and businesses is to use solar power.Capturing heat from the sun can be done in several ways,even in the dead of winter.In order to harness the sun’s heat what is called a solar source is needed.A solar source is something that will attract the sun’s rays and trap the heat generated by them. A sun room is a good way to illustrate this.
Sun rooms are attached to the house and are typically constructed of floor to ceiling glass panels.They are usually built to face the full morning sun so as to get the full effect of the heat. The glass intensifies the sun’s rays so that everything in the room is heated. This is a very efficient and generally economical way of heating.
Here are some other types of solar heat:
Thermal mass that absorbs and retains the heat of the sun while it is shining and then disperses it after the sun goes down.
A natural ventilation and solar heating system, the Trombe Wall, uses air channels to trap heat between glass and a solar mass facing the sun. That sunlight is then absorbed and stored in the wall before being circulated through vents in the top and bottom of the wall.The wall uses this to radiate the heat.
A solar chimney is another solar ventilation system. It is made of a thermal mass that is hollow on the inside. The chimney warms the air inside of the chimney and causes the heat to rise. This rise allows air to vent and circulate properly.
A great way to ventilate a building is through solar cooling. Solar heat is absorbed and cooled with ice made by a solar powered steam engine that is attached to a cooling device.
There are several ways we can heat and cool our homes,schools, and businesses. The methods that have been listed try to highlight how you can use the sun for this need without having to depend on those that use non renewable materials for energy.
Republished by Blog Post Promoter
Posted in Solar Energy | 
Tags: environmentally friendly, home heating, solar cooling, solar heat, solar heating, solar photovoltaic | 
No Comments »
The Reality Of Low Energy Light Bulbs
There are several good reasons to consider installing low energy light bulbs, chief among them being that you can save serious sums of money, you can help to reduce global warming and, thanks to legislation banning incandescent light bulbs, you don’t really have a choice.
So what’s on offer in the low energy lighting stall? Well when it comes down to it, there’s CFL’s (Compact Fluorescent Lamps) and LED’s (Light Emitting Diodes) and that pretty much covers it.
Out of these two, CFL’s have been available for much longer yet in terms of efficiency they are only about 4 times better than incandescents plus they have a long list of murky issues with regards to aesthetics, health and safety, usability and environmental concerns.
LED’s have only recently become available for domestic use but are already 10 times more efficient and constantly improving at an astounding rate, and pose no problems at all.
So if LED’s are way better than either incandescent light bulbs or CFL’s then why aren’t more people installing them? There are several reasons but we’ll look at just the main two.
The first of which is that most folk have a perception that LED’s are for toys and decorative lights, not serious domestic lighting. This is mainly because viable LED alternatives to mainstream light bulbs haven’t been around long and are still not so easy to find.
The second reason that LED technology is still proving slow to take off is centred on the fact that most folk really don’t comprehend the economics of electric lighting. It’s simply in our nature to assign importance to headline information and avoid figuring out the (usually more complex) full picture.
Hence we moan when confronted with the electricity bill yet also moan when we see the price sticker for LED light bulbs at the local store and totally fail to spot the underlying relationship. The cost of electric lighting is a major factor in most electricity bills and it’s not the cost of the light bulbs that’s the culprit; rather it’s the cost of running them.
Those “cheap” incandescent light bulbs convert less than 10% of the electricity into light; the rest of the electricity (and the money you paid for it) is wasted as heat. Compare that to an “expensive” LED light bulb that converts over 90% of the electricity into light.
The payback period on those apparently costly LED’s can be as little as one year and given that most boast life spans of 50,000 hours and upwards compared to 2,000 for regular light bulbs you would need to replace your cheap light bulbs over 25 times to keep pace with the LED’s. Hmm… maybe “expensive” high quality LED light bulbs aren’t so pricey after all.
So what should you look for when checking out low energy light bulbs? Foremost is quality; there are many cheap LED’s on the market and they’re not worth a candle (well maybe a few, but that’s all).
In general you can spot a high quality LED bulb by the fact that it will state what sort of incandescent light bulb it aims to replace; so if you want to replace a 35 watt, 50 degree beam, warm white halogen lamp then check that the LED you’re considering is a good match for all 3 features (luminosity, light spread and color).
The other main point to get used to is that LED’s are intrinsically very directional and thus compete very well with most conventional spotlights. LED light bulbs that provide all round illumination are available but they are much less common than the spot light formats, which are already becoming very popular as replacements for MR16 halogen spots.
MR16 is often used as a generic term to describe 12v low voltage lighting, but in fact it covers both 12v two pin lamps (using the GU5.3 base) and direct mains voltage using the GU10 twist and lock base. Either way, both GU10 LED and 12v LED bulbs represent a great way to get on board right now with true low energy lighting.
Republished by Blog Post Promoter