Solar Powered Home Blog

I probably don’t need to make the argument again.  It’s important to save energy.

• It’s important because it saves you money.  Gas prices go up, electric bills soar, oil or natural gas costs rise.  Saving energy saves you cash.
• It’s important because it’s good for the environment.  The effects of greenhouse gases are clear.  Climate change is real.  And the continued use of fossil fuels will do nothing but increase the potential damage to the planet.

But do you know how to save energy?  Here are some tips:

• Make sure everyone in your household is on board.  Enlist the kids to help.  Talk to your spouse and come to an agreement about it together.  Do you have a housekeeper, nanny or babysitter come by?  Speak to her to make sure she knows what you expect from her in terms of energy saving.  And the same for in-laws, parents, siblings and other family members that may spend a lot of time in your home.  Be specific about what you expect.  You may even want to post the rules.
• Switch to compact fluorescent lights, or CFL’s.  They use less energy.
• When you leave the room, turn them off.  But don’t stop there.  Turn off the television set or radio and shut down the computer.  And don’t forget the accessories.  Turn off the cable box and the DVR when you turn off the computer.  Shut off the monitor, printer and fax machine when you shut down the computer.
• Unplug appliances when you aren’t using them.  Electricity leaks into an appliance that is plugged in, whether it is on or not.  So unplug your toaster oven and coffee maker.
• Do you like to keep your porch light or outside lights on overnight?  Install a motion detector instead.  The lights will turn on when someone approaches, but you will save energy in the meantime.
• Use the washing machine and dishwasher only when you have a full load.  And if your dishwasher has an option of a quick cycle or air dry, choose them.
• Can you turn off your hot water heater during the day?  If no one is in the house and you have no need for hot water during the day, switch it off.  Turn in on when you get home from work and let the water heat up before you shower or wash the dishes.
• Install a ceiling fan to reduce the need for the air conditioner.

Of course to really save on energy, you should seriously consider converting your home to a solar powered home.  Installing a home solar panel can provide you with totally renewable, cost-free energy to cook your food, heat your home and turn on your lights and other appliances.  The most cost-effective way to convert to solar power is to do it yourself.  Visit Earth4Energy to find out how you can do it.

Read about some innovative approaches to saving energy here:

• German Innovation: Dial4Light – Street Lighting by SMS … – Lemgo, a German town situated between Hannover and Dortmund, is testing a new mobile application in a field trial: By sending a 50-cent premium-SMS a street of houses can be illuminated for 15 minutes. Many communities in Germany turn off their street lighting system from 11 pm to save energy and funds. It’s a bad solution for pedestrians at night, but a town like Lemgo saves about 50,000 Euro a year.

• Design with Intent | Design & Punishment – Design and Punishment, by Ben Cunningham. Photo from the Arts Institute at Bournemouth’s 2007 Three Dimensional Design graduate directory. Very neatly linking the themes of the last two posts (devices to make users aware of their energy …

Has this ever happened to you?  You finally get home after a hard day of work.  Another day, another dollar that doesn’t stretch nearly far enough.  You pick up the mail on the way into the house.  Mixed up in the batch is your electric or gas bill.  You open it, prepared for the worst.  You take one look at it and shriek, “Holy Moley!  I’ve got to go solar!”

There are a lot of reasons to convert your home to a solar powered home.  Reducing your power bills is a big one for most families.  And with the expectation that power bills are only going to get higher as the years go by, a lot of families think that there is no time like the present.  Of course, environmental concerns also inspire many people to go solar or search out other renewable resources, like residential wind turbines.  Committed to leaving the earth as clean as, or cleaner than, they found it, many people feel a personal obligation to go off the electric grid.  And some are motivated by a sense of anxiety over potential geopolitical turmoil.  If oil producing countries are at odds with the United States, the availability of oil may decrease or vanish.  So, to ensure energy self-sufficiency even in those unfortunate circumstances, you may want to go off the electric grid now.

The most popular types of renewable energy for residential use are solar and wind power.  Since residential wind turbines require a windy spot and a lot of space, many people looking for an alternative energy source decide to make their home a solar powered home.  All you need is sun and a roof to put the home solar panel on.

Once installed, there are a few different components in a residential solar power system.  Maybe most obviously, a residential solar power system will have a solar generator.  The solar generator uses photovoltaic cells to turn sunlight into electrical energy and stores it in cells for use in the evening or on overcast days.  The solar generator will allow you to turn on your lights and run your electrical appliances.  That electric bill we were talking about at the beginning of this article?  Gone.

Another component that a solar powered home has is a solar thermal system.  The same sunlight that warms your skin when you step out into it will warm your home with the use of photovoltaic cells and a solar thermal system.  Neither rising fuel costs nor environmental concerns nor the actions of antagonistic oil-producing countries can make you shiver in your own solar powered home.   

The third component is a solar cooker.  A solar cooker allows you to boil, roast or bake a dinner to serve five people with no fuel but sunlight, leaving behind no emissions or residue.  Although it may take longer to cook with a solar cooker, the slow-cooked character of the food often causes it to be even more delicious.  Healthy cooking is easy with a solar cooker.

So, in short, you can get a free and reliable supply of light, heat and cooking fuel when you convert your home to a solar powered home.  Want to learn more?  Click here to see how you can build and install your own home solar panel for less than $200.

 Read more about green living here:

• resolve to protect your family and kick radon out of your home in 2009 – as a builder, homeowner, and parent, i know that having a healthy and green home is extremely important in protecting the health of my family. in my experience as a builder, homes built for health and safety sell faster. …

• Easy Peasy Tip: Reduce your toilet’s water consumption | Tiny Choices – There’s an easy way to turn your regular water-guzzling tank-style toilet into a water-conserving machine: remove the lid from the tank, and check out how much.

Electricity used to seem to me almost like magic.  Flip a switch and it comes on.  Reliably.  Uninterrupted.  The user need have no understanding of how or why.  And here’s the evidence of that:  Since I have been tall enough to reach the switch, I have been able to turn on electricity.  My success rate approached 100%.  And yet, until recently, I had no idea how electricity was made.

Well, I have learned that electricity is generated by moving enormous turbines.  A turbine might be compared to a windmill or a pinwheel.  It is a collection of blades attached at one end to a hub.  When some type of fluid passes along the blades, causing them to spin.  The fluid used can be water, steam, air, or gases caused by the combustion of fuel.  The turbines can spin at very high rates and the kinetic energy caused by the spinning is made into electricity.  The spinning turbines push a huge magnet along a wire.  This causes the wire to be electrified.  The electricity is pushed out of the wire through a series of transformers.  And electricity is then stored in the transformers.

Now, we often refer to the fluid used to cause the turbines to spin when we refer to electricity.  So “hydroelectric power” means that water was used to spin the turbines, while “coal power” indicates that coal was used to heat water into steam which in turn caused the blades to spin.

A common way of causing the turbines to spin is by burning fossil fuels.  In this case, coal, petroleum and natural gas are used to heat water to boiling, causing steam.  The steam turns the blades of the turbines.  Of course, burning fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide, which contributes to pollution and climate change.  So although this method is common, efforts have increased recently to find other ways of generating the power necessary to generate electricity.

Hydroelectric power uses water to move the turbines.  When hydroelectric power is used, dams are constructed to manage the water flow, so that the quantity and power of the water are contained and exploited as needed to move the turbines.  The water is heated in the process of using the water for hydroelectric power, causing damage to the ecosystem.

Wind power is produced when wind is used to move the turbines.  In many parts of the country, “wind farms,” that is, fields of wind turbines stand ready for the wind to blow, to move the turbines cleanly and generate electricity.

Nuclear energy is produced when nuclear fission heats water to boiling.  The steam released by the boiling water is the fluid used to cause the turbines to spin.

Recently, efforts have been made to turn bio-waste into electricity.  As with fossil fuels and nuclear energy, the bio-waste is burned to heat water to boiling and turn it into steam.  The steam causes the blades of the turbine to move and electricity is generated as described above.

Solar energy, in contrast, does not rely on turbines.  Rather, solar energy uses the sun’s radiation to act upon photovoltaic cells.  We will examine how the sun’s rays become electricity in a future article.

In the meantime, if you are interested in turning your home into a solar powered home, or in installing residential wind turbines, visit Earth4Energy and do it yourself!  

Read more about wind turbines here:

• Urban Wind Turbine: A Rare Species Spotted – Ask a die-hard altpower fan if they’ve ever seen a functional wind turbine in the urban jungle, and chances are, …

• WindEnergy7.com » Blog Archive » buy turbine, home wind turbines – Free green power isn’t all you get from a home wind turbine, with your investment you have improved your home value dramatically. Your wind/solar powered home is more likely to sell than others with no home generation or emergency power …

Read more about self-sufficient living here:

• Magazines (and Websites) About Homesteading and Self-Sufficiency … – The magazine was filled with stories about self-sufficient country living, the sort of thing my dad aspired to. I’d read the magazine after he was finished, but never really understood the appeal of building your own greenhouse or …

• DESIGN AND MAKE A HOMESTEADER’ S KNIFE – But in the day-to-day routine of self-sufficient country living, edged blades are almost as essential today as they were back when ships were powered by the wind, plows and wagons were pulled by horses, and before food came …