A Look At The Benefits of Green Solar Energy

Lets contemplate the benefits to be of green home energy including passive solar energy and the micro-generation of renewable energy for homes amongst others. Every 15 minutes the sun produces enough power to supply our current energy needs for an entire year. The United Kingdom due to its distance from the equator receives 60% of the solar energy received at the equator. This energy equates to between 900 to 1200 kWh per square meter per year.. This energy is equivalent to the energy production of 1000 power stations.

The energy coming from the sun fluxes and wanes depending on the solar activity. The less sun spot activity on our sun the less energy emitted. Interestingly enough the number of sunspot-free days suggest that solar activity is heading towards its lowest level in about 100 years'. The low level of sun spot activity may suggests that the Sun may be moving into a hibernation-like state, with the obvious question of whether this will have any major consequences for us on Earth.

We have no way of knowing what the climate in any region of earth will be in the future therefore, instead of putting all our eggs in one basket, we SHOULD be putting our money into possible adaptation for both global warning and global cooling. And I know which I would prefer.

Anyway I digress...

To really understand and exploit the benefits of green solar energy, one needs to understand how solar energy is harnessed.

Green solar energy can be divided into two types i.e. thermal (heat) and light.

Thermal energy is considered passive solar energy. The use of passive solar energy in housing involves the placement of the building for optimum benefit, the building design and position of suitable building components to make full use of sunlight for day-lighting, passive heating, and/or passive cooling. Apart from saving energy, the primary benefit of a passive solar home is the improved comfort of its occupants.

Thermal energy is harnessed through the design and materials used to construct a building.

The building gathers energy from the sun the old fashioned way; by allowing it to stream in through the windows...

A passive solar home or building can get a full quarter of its heat from the sun alone through the integration of the appropriate ratio of windows to a south facing wall (if you live northern hemisphere)whilst using heat retaining materials, for example brick and stone, and a little intelligent design. That same thermal energy can also be used to heat water for solar hot water systems.

In a passive solar house window placement and sizes are crucial as they can affect the heat gain or loss during various months of the year. When designing and planning a passive solar home the ultimate goal is to have a home that is warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Passive solar home energy systems can easily be integrated with active solar systems. A passive solar system functions best in an energy efficient home with a well designed mechanical system.

It unfortunate that in mass produced housing the principles of passive thermal energy are hardly ever used. A passive solar system can only be a part of an energy efficient home and should not be considered as a stand alone solution to saving energy. To reduce the need to use lights within the home during the day tubular skylights along with sky tubes and solar tunnels can be used. The suns rays can be captured by the photovoltaic cells of solar panels to create electricity.

For the majority of home owners the reason to use renewable home energy is to reduce their utility bills. Constructing a green solar energy system can come with a large initial investment, however they generally pay for themselves within a few years by providing either supplemental electricity or all of the electricity to your home or business.

Building your own solar panels, participating in government refunds and net metering, in which you sell unused electricity back to the power company, can reduce the cost of implementing a green solar energy system. In addition, green solar energy systems require little to no maintenance after installation, as most have no moving parts. You don't have to construct the whole solar energy system in one go, you can easily construct solar panels in modular sections and incorporate them into your home energy system whenever you complete a new panel.

Wind And Solar Power Systems

You may be thinking of utilizing solar energy systems for your home. If so, you have to first consider your energy usage, how are you using your power at home? A lot of individuals and homeowners fail to realize how inefficient or wasteful they can be when it comes to power consumption. A lot of times, there are undiscovered power leaks especially from old and poorly designed electrical apparatus in many households. Such appliances can consume a significant amount of energy to function but do not necessarily turn out optimal results. Wind And Solar Power Systems Patel

If you wish to begin minimizing the energy consumption in your home, you will need to start by buying new electrical appliances that has better energy utilization, since most recent electrical appliances nowadays are more energy efficient. Solar power is mind-bogglingly awesome. Imagine this; the sun's rays carry hundreds or even thousands of times more energy than we can ever imagine the world needing. The only problem with having this overwhelming energy from the sun is how to harness it. Using solar energy systems for the home is actually a practical and an eco-friendly alternative; that is if you wish to cut down on your electric bills as well as your carbon footprint.

The basic principle in building solar systems for the home is to make some sort of solar array to gain control of the sun's energy and alter it to become a usable and sustainable electrical energy. To achieve this, one will require solar cells (photovoltaic cells) to capture the sun's energy. Solar cells have amazing power generating properties when exposed to sunlight. The electric current produced by the solar arrays can then be stocked up in battery banks for later use. Wind And Solar Power Systems Patel

These awesome solar energy systems for the home are already quite popular among many households. Most homeowners are opting for the homemade power systems to capture solar energy. Such systems may vary from small thermal equipment to large solar panels attached on rooftops. Conventional means of generating energy by burning fossil fuels greatly affects the environment as well as the weather. Employing solar energy to generate electricity does not affect the environment in a negative way since there are no greenhouse gases present.

Many individuals and homeowners are more concerned about cost savings more than anything else. Opting for solar energy to meet at least part of your energy needs can be exactly the best solution for you. Sunlight is absolutely free and unlimited, whereas oil, gas and coal is very much expensive and is not sustainable. Electricity generated from solar energy systems for the home can be used primarily on electrical appliances as well as for heating purposes. These are the general uses of solar energy systems at home. Although there is other uncommon uses such as purifying and sterilizing water as well as solar kiln drying wood or even smelting.

Solar energy is a great alternative for many homeowners who still depend on the nation's power grid and wish they could do something to lessen their electricity bills. As the overwhelming demand for energy continues to rise, the energy supply from fossil fuels continues to decline. You do not have to be a genius to see where this is headed. Wind And Solar Power Systems Patel

Sun related Facts about Solar Energy

  • Sunlight travels to the earth in approximately 8 minutes from 93,000,000 miles away, at 186,282 miles per second.
  • The sun is also the main source of non-renewable fossil fuels (coal, gas and petroleum), which began life as plants or animals whose energy came from the sun millions of year ago.
  • Solar energy is responsible for weather patterns and ocean currents.
  • Clouds, pollution and wind can prevent the sun's rays from reaching the earth.


Other Interesting Facts about Solar Energy:


  • Da Vinci predicted a solar industrialization as far back as 1447.
  • In one hour more sunlight falls on the earth than what is used by the entire population in one year.
  • A world record was set in 1990 when a solar powered aircraft flew 4060km across the USA, using no fuel.
  • Fierce weather cost the world a record $130 Billion in the first eleven months of 1998- more money than was lost from weather related disasters from 1980 to 1990 ($82 Billion).
  • Researchers from the Worldwatch Institute and Munich Re blame deforestation and climate change from Earth warming for much of the loss. The previous one-year record was $90 Billion in 1996. Source – Associated Press, November 28,1998.
  • About 2 billion people in the world are currently without electricity.
  • Accounting for only 5 percent of the world's population, Americans consume 26 percent of the world's energy.
  • Electric ovens consume the most amount of electricity, followed by microwaves and central air conditioning.
  • Third world countries with an abundance of sunlight and a population currently without electricity, represents the fastest growing market for solar energy, with the largest domestic market being the utilities sector.
  • Shell Oil predicts that 50% of the world's energy will come from renewable sources by 2040.

Facts about Solar Energy usage

  • Solar Energy is measured in kilowatt-hour. 1 kilowatt = 1000 watts.
  • 1 kilowatt-hour (kWh) = the amount of electricity required to burn a 100 watt light bulb for 10 hours.
  • According to the US Department of Energy, an average American household used approximately 866-kilowatt hours per month in 1999 costing them $70.68.
  • About 30% of our total energy consumption is used to heat water.


Facts about Solar Energy systems:


  • A home solar system is typically made up of solar panels, an inverter, a solar battery, a Solar charger controller, wiring and support structure.
  • A 1-kilowatt home solar system takes about 1-2 days to install and costs around US$10,000, but can vary greatly and does not take into account any incentives offered by the government.
  • A 1-kilowatt home solar system consists of about 10-12 solar panels and requires about 100 square feet of installation area.
  • A 1 kilowatt home solar system will generate approximately 1,600 kilowatt hours per year in a sunny climate (receiving 5.5 hours of sunshine per day) and approximately 750 kilowatt hours per year in a cloudy climate (receiving 2.5 hours of sunshine per day).
  • A 1-kilowatt home solar system will prevent approximately 170 lbs. of coal from being burned, 300 lbs of CO2 from being released into the atmosphere and 105 gallons of water from being consumed each month!
  • About 40 solar cells are usually combined into a solar panel and around 10-12 panels mounted in an array facing due North to receive maximum sunlight.
  • The system usually comes with a 5-year warranty, although the solar panels are warranted for 20.
  • Relying on the battery back up, a solar energy system can provide electricity 24×7, even on cloudy days and at night.
  • Solar panels come in various colours.
  • Solar energy can be collected and stored in batteries, reflected, insulated, absorbed and transmitted.

Discover The Solar Energy Truth

Here we discuss Facts about solar energy usage, systems, plus sun related and other Interesting Facts about Solar Energy. All of which will help you with your decision whether or not to install a solar energy system at your home. Perhaps you'd even like to save yourself a lot of money and Build your very own solar energy system.


General facts


  • Solar Energy is better for the environment than traditional forms of energy.
  • Solar energy has many uses such as electricity production and heating of water through photovoltaic cells and directly for drying clothes.
  • Solar energy can also be used to heat swimming pools, power cars, for attic fans, calculators and other small appliances. It produces lighting for indoors or outdoors.
  • You can even cook food with solar energy.
  • Solar Energy is becoming more and more popular. The worldwide demand for Solar Energy is currently greater than supply.

Photovoltaic Electricity

Photovoltaic comes from the words photo meaning light and volt, a measurement of electricity. Sometimes photovoltaic cells are called PV cells or solar cells for short. You are probably familiar with photovoltaic cells. Solar-powered toys, calculators, and roadside telephone call boxes all use solar cells to convert sunlight into electricity.

Solar cells are made up of silicon, the same substance that makes up sand. Silicon is the second most common substance on earth. Solar cells can supply energy to anything that is powered by batteries or electrical power. Electricity is produced when sunlight strikes the solar cell, causing the electrons to move around. The action of the electrons starts an electric current. The conversion of sunlight into electricity takes place silently and instantly. There are no mechanical parts to wear out.

You won't see many photovoltaic power plants today. Compared to other ways of making electricity, photovoltaic systems are expensive. It costs 10-20 cents a kilowatt-hour to produce electricity from solar cells. Most people pay their electric companies about 11 cents a kilowatt-hour for the electricity they use, large industrial consumers pay less. Today, solar systems are mainly used to generate electricity in remote areas that are a long way from electric power lines.


Solar Thermal Electricity

Like solar cells, solar thermal systems, also called concentrated solar power (CSP), use solar energy to produce electricity, but in a different way. Most solar thermal systems use a solar collector with a mirrored surface to focus sunlight onto a receiver that heats a liquid. The super-heated liquid is used to make steam to produce electricity in the same way that coal plants do.

There are nine solar thermal power plants in the Mojave Desert that together produce 360 MW of electricity. Solar energy has great potential for the future. Solar energy is free, and its supplies are unlimited. It does not pollute or otherwise damage the environment. It cannot be controlled by any one nation or industry. If we can improve the technology to harness the sun's enormous power, we may never face energy shortages again.

Solar Space Heating

Space heating means heating the space inside a building. Today, many homes use solar energy for space heating. A passive solar home is designed to let in as much sunlight as possible. It is like a big solar collector.

Sunlight passes through the windows and heats the walls and floor inside the house. The light can get in, but the heat is trapped inside. A passive solar home does not depend on mechanical equipment, such as pumps and blowers, to heat the house. An active solar home, on the other hand, uses special equipment to collect sunlight. An active solar house may use special collectors that look like boxes covered with glass.

These collectors are mounted on the rooftop facing south to take advantage of the winter sun. Dark-colored metal plates inside the boxes absorb sunlight and change it into heat. (Black absorbs sunlight better than any other color.) Air or water flows through the collectors and is warmed by the heat. The warm air or water is distributed to the house, just as it would be with an ordinary furnace system.

Solar Hot Water Heating

Solar energy can be used to heat water. Heating water for bathing, dishwashing, and clothes washing is the second biggest home energy cost. A solar water heater works a lot like solar space heating. In our hemisphere, a solar collector is mounted on the south side of a roof where it can capture sunlight. The sunlight heats water in a tank. The hot water is piped to faucets throughout a house, just as it would be with an ordinary water heater. Today, more than one million homes and 200,000 businesses in the U.S. use solar water heaters.

Solar Electricity

Solar energy can also be used to produce electricity. Two ways to make electricity from solar energy are photovoltaics and solar thermal systems.

What is Homemade Solar Energy?

Every day, the sun radiates (sends out) an enormous amount of energy—called solar energy. It radiates more energy in one second than the world has used since time began. This energy comes from within the sun itself.

Like most stars, the sun is a big gas ball made up mostly of hydrogen and helium gas. The sun makes energy in its inner core in a process called nuclear fusion. Only a small part of the solar energy that the sun radiates into space ever reaches the earth, but that is more than enough to supply all our energy needs. Every day enough solar energy reaches the earth to supply our nation's energy needs for a year!

It takes the sun's energy just a little over eight minutes to travel the 93 million miles to earth. Solar energy travels at a speed of 186,000 miles per second, the speed of light. Today, people use solar energy to heat buildings and water and to generate electricity.


Solar Collectors

Heating with solar energy is not as easy as you might think. Capturing sunlight and putting it to work is difficult because the solar energy that reaches the earth is spread out over a large area. The sun does not deliver that much energy to any one place at any one time.

The amount of solar energy an area receives depends on the time of day, the season of the year, the cloudiness of the sky, and how close you are to the earth's equator.

A solar collector is one way to capture sunlight and change it into usable heat energy. A closed car on a sunny day is like a solar collector. As sunlight passes through the car's windows, it is absorbed by the seat covers, walls, and floor of the car. The absorbed light changes into heat. The car's windows let light in, but they don't let all the heat out. A closed car can get very hot!

Solar Energy And Its Use

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 correctly.Solar energy technologies use the sun's energy and light to provide heat, light, hot water, electricity, and even cooling, for homes, businesses, and industry.There are a variety of technologies that have been developed to take advantage of solar energy. These include:

Photovoltaic (solar cell) Systems

Solar cells convert sunlight directly into electricity. Solar cells are often used to power calculators and watches. They are made of semiconducting materials similar to those used in computer chips. When sunlight is absorbed by these materials, the solar energy knocks electrons loose from their atoms, allowing the electrons to flow through the material to produce electricity. This process of converting light (photons) to electricity (voltage) is called the photovoltaic (PV) effect.

Solar cells are typically combined into modules that hold about 40 cells; a number of these modules are mounted in PV arrays that can measure up to several meters on a side. These flat-plate PV arrays can be mounted at a fixed angle facing south, or they can be mounted on a tracking device that follows the sun, allowing them to capture the most sunlight over the course of a day. Several connected PV arrays can provide enough power for a household; for large electric utility or industrial applications, hundreds of arrays can be interconnected to form a single, large PV system.

Thin film solar cells use layers of semiconductor materials only a few micrometers thick. Thin film technology has made it possible for solar cells to now double as rooftop shingles, roof tiles, building facades, or the glazing for skylights or atria. The solar cell version of items such as shingles offer the same protection and durability as ordinary asphalt shingles.
Some solar cells are designed to operate with concentrated sunlight. These cells are built into concentrating collectors that use a lens to focus the sunlight onto the cells. This approach has both advantages and disadvantages compared with flat-plate PV arrays. The main idea is to use very little of the expensive semiconducting PV material while collecting as much sunlight as possible. But because the lenses must be pointed at the sun, the use of concentrating collectors is limited to the sunniest parts of the country. Some concentrating collectors are designed to be mounted on simple tracking devices, but most require sophisticated tracking devices, which further limit their use to electric utilities, industries, and large buildings.

The performance of a solar cell is measured in terms of its efficiency at turning sunlight into electricity. Only sunlight of certain energies will work efficiently to create electricity, and much of it is reflected or absorbed by the material that make up the cell. Because of this, a typical commercial solar cell has an efficiency of 15%-about one-sixth of the sunlight striking the cell generates electricity. Low efficiencies mean that larger arrays are needed, and that means higher cost. Improving solar cell efficiencies while holding down the cost per cell is an important goal of the PV industry, NREL researchers, and other U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) laboratories, and they have made significant progress. The first solar cells, built in the 1950s, had efficiencies of less than 4%.

Solar Electricity

Many power plants today use fossil fuels as a heat source to boil water. The steam from the boiling water rotates a large turbine, which activates a generator that produces electricity. However, a new generation of power plants, with concentrating solar power systems, uses the sun as a heat source. There are three main types of concentrating solar power systems: parabolic-trough, dish/engine, and power tower. Parabolic-trough systems concentrate the sun's energy through long rectangular, curved (U-shaped) mirrors. The mirrors are tilted toward the sun, focusing sunlight on a pipe that runs down the centre of the trough. This heats the oil flowing through the pipe. The hot oil then is used to boil water in a conventional steam generator to produce electricity.

A dish/engine system uses a mirrored dish (similar to a very large satellite dish). The dish-shaped surface collects and concentrates the sun's heat onto a receiver, which absorbs the heat and transfers it to fluid within the engine. The heat causes the fluid to expand against a piston or turbine to produce mechanical power. The mechanical power is then used to run a generator or alternator to produce electricity.

A power tower system uses a large field of mirrors to concentrate sunlight onto the top of a tower, where a receiver sits. This heats molten salt flowing through the receiver. Then, the salt's heat is used to generate electricity through a conventional steam generator. Molten salt retains heat efficiently, so it can be stored for days before being converted into electricity. That means electricity can be produced on cloudy days or even several hours after sunset.

Solar Hot Water

The shallow water of a lake is usually warmer than the deep water. That's because the sunlight can heat the lake bottom in the shallow areas, which in turn, heats the water. It's nature's way of solar water heating. The sun can be used in basically the same way to heat water used in buildings and swimming pools.

Most solar water heating systems for buildings have two main parts: a solar collector and a storage tank. The most common collector is called a flat-plate collector. Mounted on the roof, it consists of a thin, flat, rectangular box with a transparent cover that faces the sun. Small tubes run through the box and carry the fluid – either water or other fluid, such as an antifreeze solution – to be heated. The tubes are attached to an absorber plate, which is painted black to absorb the heat. As heat builds up in the collector, it heats the fluid passing through the tubes.

The storage tank then holds the hot liquid. It can be just a modified water heater, but it is usually larger and very well-insulated. Systems that use fluids other than water usually heat the water by passing it through a coil of tubing in the tank, which is full of hot fluid. Solar water heating systems can be either active or passive, but the most common are active systems. Active systems rely on pumps to move the liquid between the collector and the storage tank, while passive systems rely on gravity and the tendency for water to naturally circulate as it is heated.

Swimming pool systems are simpler. The pool's filter pump is used to pump the water through a solar collector, which is usually made of black plastic or rubber. And of course, the pool stores the hot water.

Passive Solar Heating and Daylighting

Step outside on a hot and sunny summer day, and you'll feel the power of solar heat and light. Today, many buildings are designed to take advantage of this natural resource through the use of passive solar heating and daylighting.The south side of a building always receives the most sunlight. Therefore, buildings designed for passive solar heating usually have large, south-facing windows. Materials that absorb and store the sun's heat can be built into the sunlit floors and walls. The floors and walls will then heat up during the day and slowly release heat at night, when the heat is needed most. This passive solar design feature is called direct gain.

Other passive solar heating design features include sunspaces and trombe walls. A sunspace (which is much like a greenhouse) is built on the south side of a building. As sunlight passes through glass or other glazing, it warms the sunspace. Proper ventilation allows the heat to circulate into the building. On the other hand, a trombe wall is a very thick, south-facing wall, which is painted black and made of a material that absorbs a lot of heat. A pane of glass or plastic glazing, installed a few inches in front of the wall, helps hold in the heat. The wall heats up slowly during the day. Then as it cools gradually during the night, it gives off its heat inside the building.

Many of the passive solar heating design features also provide daylighting. Daylighting is simply the use of natural sunlight to brighten up a building's interior. To lighten up north-facing rooms and upper levels, a clerestory - a row of windows near the peak of the roof - is often used along with an open floor plan inside that allows the light to bounce throughout the building.

Of course, too much solar heating and daylighting can be a problem during the hot summer months. Fortunately, there are many design features that help keep passive solar buildings cool in the summer. For instance, overhangs can be designed to shade windows when the sun is high in the summer. Sunspaces can be closed off from the rest of the building. And a building can be designed to use fresh-air ventilation in the summer.

Solar Process Space Heating and Cooling

Commercial and industrial buildings may use the same solar technologies - photovoltaic, passive heating, daylighting, and water heating - that are used for residential buildings. These non-residential buildings can also use solar energy technologies that would be impractical for a home. These technologies include ventilation air preheating, solar process heating and solar cooling.

Many large buildings need ventilated air to maintain indoor air quality. In cold climates, heating this air can use large amounts of energy. A solar ventilation system can preheat the air, saving both energy and money. This type of system typically uses a transpired collector, which consists of a thin, black metal panel mounted on a south-facing wall to absorb the sun's heat. Air passes through the many small holes in the panel. A space behind the perforated wall allows the air streams from the holes to mix together. The heated air is then sucked out from the top of the space into the ventilation system.

Solar process heating systems are designed to provide large quantities of hot water or space heating for non-residential buildings. A typical system includes solar collectors that work along with a pump, a heat exchanger, and/or one or more large storage tanks. The two main types of solar collectors used - an evacuated-tube collector and a parabolic-trough collector - can operate at high temperatures with high efficiency. An evacuated-tube collector is a shallow box full of many glass, double-walled tubes and reflectors to heat the fluid inside the tubes. A vacuum between the two walls insulates the inner tube, holding in the heat. Parabolic troughs are long, rectangular, curved (U-shaped) mirrors tilted to focus sunlight on a tube, which runs down the centre of the trough. This heats the fluid within the tube.

The heat from a solar collector can also be used to cool a building. It may seem impossible to use heat to cool a building, but it makes more sense if you just think of the solar heat as an energy source. Your familiar home air conditioner uses an energy source, electricity, to create cool air. Solar absorption coolers use a similar approach, combined with some very complex chemistry tricks, to create cool air from solar energy. Solar energy can also be used with evaporative coolers (also called "swamp coolers") to extend their usefulness to more humid climates, using another chemistry trick called desiccant cooling.

Experimental Solar Power

A solar updraft tower, also known as a solar chimney or solar tower, consists of a large greenhouse that funnels into a central tower. As sunlight shines on the greenhouse, the air inside is heated, and expands. The expanding air flows toward the central tower, where a turbine converts the air flow into electricity. A 50 kW prototype was constructed in Ciudad Real Spain and operated for eight years before decommissioning in 1989.]

Thermoelectric or "thermovoltaic" devices convert a temperature difference between dissimilar materials into an electric current. First proposed as a method to store solar energy by solar pioneer Mouchout in the 1800s, thermoelectrics reemerged in the Soviet Union during the 1930s. Under the direction of Soviet scientist Abram Ioffe a concentrating system was used to thermoelectrically generate power for a 1 hp engine ]Thermogenerators were later used in the US space program as an energy conversion technology for powering deep space missions such as Cassini, Galileo and Viking. Research in this area is focused on raising the efficiency of these devices from 7–8% to 15–20%.

Finally, Space-based solar power is a theoretical design for the collection of solar power in space, for use on Earth. SBSP differs from the usual method of solar power collection in that the solar panels used to collect the energy would reside on a satellite in orbit, often referred to as a solar power satellite (SPS), rather than on Earth's surface. In space, collection of the Sun's energy is unaffected by the day/night cycle, weather, seasons, or the filtering effect of Earth's atmospheric gases. Average solar energy per unit area outside Earth's atmosphere is on the order of ten times that available on Earth's surface. However, there is no shortage of energy reaching the surface. The amount of solar energy reaching the surface of the planet each year is about twice the amount of energy that will be obtained forever from coal, oil, natural gas, and mined Uranium, combined, even using breeder reactors.

Conclusion

Solar power plants can face high installation costs, although this has been decreasing due to the curve. Developing countries have started to build solar power plants, replacing other sources of energy generation.Since solar radiation is intermittent, solar power generation is usually combined either with storage or other energy sources to provide continuous power, although for small distributed producer/consumers, net metering makes this transparent to the consumer. On a slightly larger scale, in Germany, a combined power plant has been demonstrated, using a mix of wind, biomass, hydro-, and solar power generation, resulting in 100% renewable energy.

The How and Why of Solar Energy

More and more people are becoming conscious about the environment and going for natural energy options. Solar energy is one such option that is simple and economical. Learnt more how to use solar energy from the points mentioned below.

The solar panels located on the house roof capture sun rays. This sets off another panel located on the other side of the home which converts the electricity or current from direct to alternating. This leads to creating of electricity in all the outlets that are there in the house. In case the residents of the house fail to use it immediately, the current is stored for future use.

Using solar energy has benefits on two fronts – financial and environmental.

  • Financial benefits are created through the reduction of energy bills. People can also garner credits from the local electrical authority. Using solar energy is also said to enhance the real estate value of a residence.

  • Environmental benefits are created through the reduction of problems related to global warming. It also leads to conservation of fossil fuels. Pollution is also reduced leading to a cleaner air and water.

Ensure that you go through quality instructions while installing solar panels on your own. This will relieve you of stress and also make you feel pleasant about your DIY project. Internet is a good place to start searching for DIY manuals.

We have gone through several guides to present you a good way of building your very own solar panels for energy. Do not hesitate and acquaint yourselves with how to generate solar energy and reduce your energy bills.