Home Solar Power

A few years back if I were to ask you what a home wind turbine was, you would most probably describe a massive tower with over-sized rotors plaguing the fields. But, with technology advancing and the ever-increasing energy crisis, it is now possible to have your own, scaled-down home wind turbine. What’s more is if you want to avoid the exorbitant prices of expert systems, you can learn to build and erect it yourself.

So, how does a home wind turbine make power?

A home wind turbine makes power by spinning a generator. The generator is attached to the rotor, made up of three aerodynamic blades, that is then attached to a tower. To keep the turbine facing the wind, the rotor has a tail, that acts as a weather vain.

If you do not know what a turbine/motor is or how it works, let me explain. Copper coils spin past magnets, and create an electromagnetic charge. This charge is then sent through wires to the batteries where it is stored. To use that charge in your home it needs to be passed through an inverter that changes the current from direct to alternating current. The reason wind power has become more popular on a small scale, is because of the improvement and efficiency in the design of the turbine.

Depending on your area’s wind conditions, the tower can vary in length. If you live near the sea where it is windy, the tower can be shorter, but in low-wind areas the tower needs to be taller to catch as much wind possible.

Over time the blades have improved drastically as researchers developed lighter, stronger, more efficient blades, with the capability of turning even in the lightest breeze. Back in the day, wind turbines had five blades, and looked similar to windmill water pumps, but recently they have moved to three blades, taking the form of over-sized airplane rotors. Like the tower, the blades vary in size, according to your wind conditions and energy requirements.

While so far we have been explaining the typical horizontal axis wind turbine, there is another design that is starting to gain popularity for small-scale projects. It is the vertical axis wind turbine or VAWT. Very different to the standard horizontal axis turbine, the VAWT spins on a vertical axis, and almost looks like a waterwheel put on its side. Since the VAWT tends to operate low to ground, it needs far more wind to make it turn efficiently, so it is not the ideal option for homeowners or small businesses. The VAWT has also been accused by ecologists of interrupting and harming various migratory birds, making it less attractive for green enthusiasts.

What you need to know before you buy a home wind turbine:

How big is the property?

Home wind turbines tend to work better in open areas expanding over an acre, where few nearby buildings can deflect the wind.

How windy is it where you live?

For the system to operate effectively, it is best to install the wind turbine is areas where the average wind speed is at least 11 miles per hour. You could get away with this by erecting a taller tower, and fix on larger blades.

Other uses for the wind turbine:

If you could use the turbine for other purposes, such as pumping in water from outside, then it may be more useful than you think. This is the reason you see so many windmills scattered over farms - they help pump water from reservoirs to the farmhouse.

Does my house need a constant power supply?

If you’re a home business owner that requires a constant power supply, or are just tired of the electricity company cutting off the power, then a home wind turbine may be the right solution. Even if the wind turbine is not strong enough to power the entire house for an extended period of time, it will be able to store the power for when you really need it.

Those are the keys to figuring out how much energy you need it to make, how tall the tower needs to be, and ideal sized blades, and the potential costs and benefits of buying a home wind turbine.

The great thing about technology is that it is always improving. So much so that motors have become smaller, efficient and cheap enough for us to attach a few small turbines right on the roof, and produce the same power as a larger turbine on a tall tower.

While commercially available wind power kits can cost up to $100,000, you can learn to make your power for a fraction of the cost, with part and materials sourced at home and the nearby hardware outlet. Even better news is that the United States and other countries offer tax relief for green energy homeowners, so not only can you cut your electricity costs, but your tax expenses too.

Forget about using the home made energy guide to make your own power at home! Try the Earth4Energy Instructions for free, and see how you can cut your power costs by up to 80% with your own home wind turbine and home solar power.

Solar Energy alternative energy, environment, hobby, Home Improvement, home wind turbine, lighting, men, money saving tips, renewable energy, society, Solar Energy, Solar Power, technology, wind power

How much do you know about solar lighting? Most people don’t realize that it can be used both indoors and out. While many of us may not have considered using home solar power to provide indoor lighting, it is becoming a growing trend world wide. It is a great way to save both money and energy.

Did you know that home solar power use dates back to over 2,600 years ago? Even still, indoor solar lighting technology is fairly new. It is, however becoming more and more frequently used in the U.S. to bring light to small structures such as park restrooms, service sheds, utility structures and others. These are locations far from established grids where conventional power sources would be cumbersome and expensive to run. There are even some commercial buildings that have begun utilizing indoor solar lighting, and the trend is growing in popularity.

Most of the indoor solar lighting in industrial use today is a mixture of solar light tube and home solar powered light technology. Combinations of home solar powered lighting and light tube technology are being used in high security applications like prisons. Solar light tubes are perfectly suited for this application, due to their ability to transfer considerable amounts of light to the interior of the structure using a very small footprint. This “hybrid” lighting method of combining home solar powered lights as a back up to these light tubes produces a solar lighting system that is extremely efficient and effective.

There are actually many uses for indoor solar lights; like lighting up your garage, shed or gazebo - not to mention the inside of your home. The fact that you don’t need an electrical source is a big advantage. All you need is a direct source of sunlight. No worrying about light bulbs or power outages. Indoor solar light installation is usually fairly easy and requires little if any maintenance and upkeep.

Many of us have buildings like garages and sheds that are far away from an electrical source making it difficult and expensive to provide a source of power. Indoor solar lighting can easily solve that dilemma and is very cost effective. You can also use products like solar skylights and track lights in your home.

With so many applications currently being made available, indoor solar lighting is showing a rapid increase in popularity. Peruse your local hardware store and you are sure to find lots of these “green” lighting products. As the technology becomes more advanced, more applications will be discovered for indoor solar lighting. The best part is that with the addition of indoor solar lights to your project, you will be saving money and the environment!

Need an easy solar lights project? Go to easysolarlighting.blogspot.com. For more info on solar technology, try solarlightssite.com.

Solar Energy alternative energy, energy effeciency, green technology, home and garden, Home Improvement, lighting, Solar Energy, Solar lighting, solar lights, Solar Power, solar technology, technology

Over the past year a lot of diy energy guides have appeared on the internet, promising to teach even a complete technical newbie how to make their own home solar and wind power, and reduce their energy bills by up to 80%. One those guides happens to be Make Natural Power. But does it deliver what is promises? And is how does it stack up to the other guides?

The best thing about Make Natural Power is its cover. Everything beyond that was disappointing to say the least. Although it appears to have all the features of the the other guides, the information is very thin and not well-explained.

Good Aspects:

You will be able to build a solar and wind power system, but it will take you a very long time, unless you have great technical skills.

The Cons about getting the guide:

* Confusing illustrations

Not only were the diagrams for both the solar and wind power instructions boring and dull, but they were badly labeled and and not even to scale.

* Low quality home solar power system

The instructions were not easy to follow, and the illustrations did not help either. Because of this, the reader is required to figure things out on their own, resulting in a useless solar panel system, if it ever get finished.

* “Thin” maintenance information

While I eventually got my wind generator to work, it ended up breaking after 2 months. This could have been prevented if I was given correct advice on how to effectively maintain the wind turbine.

* Slow customer support

A lot of the time we had to contact customer service for assistance. But they were very slow to respond, and by the time they did reply we had either forgotten what the problem or had figured it out ourselves. On average, it will take over 5 days to get the answers you need.

Overall Rating

If you are willing to get a cheap knock-off of Earth4Energy, but for the same price, then by all means get the Make Natural Power guide. The book was terribly written, the instructions were confusing, and it was not a pleasant experience for me.

Tim McDonald recommends you rather try Earth4Energy for FREE, if you want to build a quality DIY Renewable Energy system and actually reduce your electricity bill.

categories: make natural power,home solar power,solar energy,wind power,renewable energy,alternative energy,home improvement,environment,technology,lighting,hobby,money saving tips,men,society

Solar Energy alternative energy, environment, hobby, Home Improvement, lighting, make natural power, men, money saving tips, renewable energy, society, Solar Energy, Solar Power, technology, wind power

During the process of researching an article about green products on photovoltaic cell systems (solar panels), I came across another way to convert the sun’s light into electricity. So let’s take a look at another type of solar energy system.

This system is not new; it was originally conceived in 1816 as an industrial rival to the steam engine. It has been largely underutilized for the past century. With the need for renewable energy sources caused by the overuse of the fossil fuels interest has resurged in solar designs, and it is now being designed into many new solar collector systems.

The Stirling engine has many different designs, some more efficient than others. Some designs use the two cylinder Alpha design, some the Beta single cylinder design and some the Gamma design (a variation of the beta for use in multiple cylinder applications). The beta Sterling design has a single chamber with two pistons and uses a highly efficient regenerator gas as the thermal conductor.

The operation of the Stirling engine is not complex, it only requires an external heat source. Some heat sources have been fuel, while some solar designs use a Fernell lens, and the latest source is large parabolic mirrors.

The basic operation of this thermal engine is really quite simple. The engine has two chambers, one hot and one cold. When an external heat source is applied the hot air expands moving a piston and flows to the cold chamber. A flywheel is attached to maintain movement.

The system is ideal when a concentrated heat source is applied, in this case sunlight. The sunlight is collected with parabolic mirrors and focused on to the surface of the hot chamber, causing the chamber to be heated and the engine to start. This temperatures can be very high. You know this from, when as a child, you took a magnifying glass and focused it on a piece of paper. When done correctly the paper would get dark and then a flame would appear.

With better-designed engines and new types of material, a movable (tracking) parabolic mirror, and a single Stirling engine you can produce 25 kilowatts of electricity.

In a future article about green products I will list the different solar technologies and how they compare to the competition.

Michael

See more of Michael’s concern for your carbon footprints at Green Products

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The Watt Power output of a Solar module is the number of watts output when it is illuminated under standard conditions. Watt Peak (Wp) is the direct current watts output of a solar module as measured under an Industry standardized Light Test.

Solar modules has dropped from around $27 Watt Peak (Wp) in 1982 to around $2.49 Wp today and can be expected to dive much further in the future. At $1 Wp, grid parity will have been achieved and Photovoltaics (PV) will be able to compete with the prevailing price of electricity.

Solar panels that cost less than $1 per watt to produce are on their way, as Colorado State University’s new method for low-cost, high-efficiency solar panels looks set to begin mass production. They will be sold for about $2 per watt to the public, about half the cost of current solar panels. The cost reduction comes from a new, continuous manufacturing process which uses cadmium telluride thin film rather than the more expensive crystalline silicon.

CdTe (Cadmium Telluride) permits a low cost production process. Automated high put though production processes have been employed successfully eliminating the need for expensive clean rooms or other specialty equipment.

Thin Firm CdTe (Cadmium Telluride) semiconductor material also converts low and diffuse light to electricity more efficiently than conventional cells under cloudy weather and dawn and dusk conditions. As a result, Thin Firm CdTe (Cadmium Telluride) modules will generally produce more electricity under real world conditions than conventional solar modules with similar power ratings.

Some sixty companies have announced to start thin film production by 2010. Thin-film solar cells consist of layers of active materials about 10 m thick compared with 200- to 300-m layers for crystalline-silicon cells. The technology allows for more flexible and robust shapes and is more cost effective.

The measurement of kilowatt-hours per kilowatt installed is an important factor. Calculate the average total solar watt output per dollar outlay. In most cases, when you are reach $0.15/kWh or better, you are competitive with your electric company.

There are cabling costs battery banks and inverters to consider. Calculating solar output, use an average of 5 hrs per day of sun. Eg. 4 x 80w panels produce 320 watts x 5 hrs should produce 1600 watts or 1.6 Kw per day. A 1000w system would produce about 4 Kwh per day. Most families use between 3-10 Kwh per day. Harness your very own experience with a do it yourself solar panel kit and discover this energy saving technology.

Create your unique do it yourself home solar power system. Home solar systems can form a vital part of any home emergency survival kit. Having a solar backup could be life saving in a natural catastrophe, or any other emergency where you could be cut off from main power but you have a need for electricity

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It comes as no surprise to many that our energy sources are depleting at an accelerating rate with no end in sight. Thus, the search for alternative energy has begun, and that journey begins with solar energy. Apart from the easy availability, solar energy helps control environmental pollution. The reason most of us havent thought of using home solar power for our personal use is because of the stigma that it is expensive and troublesome to install.

However, you may be surprised to know how far away from the truth those two statements really are. Solar power will in fact save you money on your electric bill each month. In addition to saving money on your electricity bill, you can also have the satisfaction of knowing that youll be saving the planet from pollution by using solar energy.

This article hopes to accomplish to dispel any misconceived notions of home solar power as well as to introduce its many uses around the house.

Solar power can be used to cook food. A solar cooker is a cooking mechanism that doesnt need any fuel to cook. It is a small box in which you can cook a meal for up to 5 people. Did you know that you can cook food with home solar power? You can boil food, roast, and even bake all kinds of food. A solar cooker doesnt reduce your cooking methods. Stay the versatile chef that you are without sacrificing your meal by using a solar cooker. The only limitation, if it is one, is the time it takes to cook your meal as it takes just a bit longer than typical stoves. However, a solar cooker is still a great option if you are looking to cut down on your energy bill and do your part in saving the environment.

Another use of home solar power is the having a solar home lighting system. This is when you have a solar house lighting system that converts solar energy into electrical energy. You maybe asking, But how does that work? Theres no sunlight at night when you need lights the most. This is possible because the energy is stored during the day in cells for use later in the nighttime. The solar energy is stored in the solar cells.

Installing a solar lighting system can almost fully eliminate your electric bill.

You may also be unaware that you can also install a home solar powered heating system for you house.

If the sound of a solar heating system sounds like someone breaking into your savings account, be assured that that is not the case. Solar heating system installers make it a point to create home solar power solutions for homes that are aesthetically pleasing and cost effective for their customers. Placing a solar heating system is a worthy investment as people have seen a ROI within a three to four year time frame, thus being free heating after that.

Want to learn more about how to reduce your energy bill and how to make solar energy? Learn more about the Green DIY Energy windmill guide at Go-SolarEnergy.com!

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Today we live in a world where fossil fuels (oil, natural gas and coal) provide more than 90% of the total energy. The energy needs are increasing and it is estimated that fossil fuels will be depleted in not so distant future. The need to look for alternative sources of energy is therefore a priority.

Why alternatives? Two reasons - energy supply and environmental concerns. We all know fossil fuels will eventually run out. By some estimates, they may be depleted within the next 50 years or so. Fossil fuels were formed from organic materials (dead plants and animals) over hundreds of millions of years and cannot be renewed. When they run out, they are gone for good.

Another growing concern is environmental pollution. Today, the combustion of fossil fuels is one of the biggest source of atmospheric pollution. Burning fossil fuels produces carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and many other poisonous chemicals that go into the air, water, and ground. This causes both health and environmental issues such as smog, acid rain, climate change, ozone depletion, and so on.

The future is definitely in renewable energy sources like home solar power and wind power. They come in practically unlimited supplies and don’t pollute the environment like fossil fuels do.

Our overly dependence on fossil fuels is not a good thing and we should start making serious efforts to decrease it. Being dependant on something that will soon run out, is not very healthy.

The main objection against green energy is the cost. That’s true, renewable energy is generally more expensive, but for how long? When fossil fuels start to run out, the price will climb and we won’t have a viable replacement.

Green and renewable energy should be our main focus in the coming decades. The sooner we become free of our fossil fuel addiction, the better.

You can start using renewable energy today and greatly reduce or even eliminate your power bill. Learn how to do it - see how to generate electricity diy guide.

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