What Solar Energy is and How it Works »
Posted By altnrg 1 year, 4 months ago in NewsA simple explanation of what solar energy is, its different forms, and how it works. Written in simple English for everyone to understand.
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Endoscopy1 year, 4 months ago
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When you live in Florida you are fighting solar power all the time except in winter. Older houses done right have trees around them to keep the house cooler and provide shade. We go from the air conditioned house to air conditioned place of work or shopping. No air conditioning or other means of keeping cool means you need to replace a lot of water and your clothes are always damp.
Things like this are fine in a lot of climates.
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CHAM1 year, 4 months ago
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Altnrg this is an interesting post. Lots of good information. Solar Power is vastly underappreciated. The world can make much better use of this unending source of energy and at the same time will be helping the environ,ent that all the world lives in.
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Natureboy1 year, 4 months ago
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Solar energy add-ons are inherently suboptimal, athough still an improvement over nothing at all.
The best is to construct a home, and a community, with an eye to low energy utilization. Part of this is understanding not only the sun, but wind, water and earth in the area where you wish to build. Once you have done this, you can design in such a way as to fully utilize winter sun, shade from summer sun, fully harvest rainwater in the soil, protect from prevailing winds.
It takes little energy to work with Mother Nature, and a great deal of energy to work against her.
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dianakuttu1 year, 4 months ago
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balu23101 year, 4 months ago
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Searchbeam1 year, 4 months ago
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Very good story, altnrg.
Here is some interesting info on Nanosolar, a company in silicon valley that has some heavyweight investors supporting it:
http://www.propeller.com/viewstory/2008/04/09/n...
They have, for the first time broken the price barrier to make solar photovoltaic cells competitive in price per kw.
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vettenut1 year, 4 months ago
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While I realize that this article cannot be comprehensive, I'd like to share a very useful category of solar energy utilization not covered in the article: passive solar heating systems.
I designed and built my residence more than 26 years ago. I use less than 50 gallons of LP gas to heat my home each winter, which is quite remarkable in my area (roughly the climate of Chicago).
Here are the details:
--passive solar direct gain system
--supplemental heat: woodstove located against the solar thermal mass wall
--backup: gas furnace backs up everything (like when I'm on vacation....)
--glazing area: south-facing wall, 14 feet high X 32 feet long
--Other info: residence is super-insulated, with 1,400 square feet of living space.
For more info on passive solar heating systems, you can simply "Google" that term.
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vettenut1 year, 4 months ago
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OR, if you want a link, check out this site:
www.greenbuilder.com
Then select "A Sourcebook for Green and Sustainable Building."
Then scroll down to "Energy" and select "Passive Solar Design."
It's interesting and informative as well!
Sorry about the "instructions," but Propeller truncates the full address line.....
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Searchbeam1 year, 4 months ago
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There is another source of abundant energy - right under our feet!
Just about 6 to 8 feet under the ground level, the temperature of soil is always constant. Depending upon the region, it is 52 to 55 degrees F. A geothermal heat extraction system uses pipes buried at that level to circulate a liquid similar to the coolant used in car radiators. That liquid is brought indoors and compressed, where it gets heated. Then a fan passes air over the heat exchanger go generate hot air to heat a building. This method of heating typically costs about 30% of the conventional fossil fuel system. One great advantage of this system is that during the Summer, the direction of the flow of the liquid is reversed to create air-conditioning, once again costing about 30% of the normal cooling cost.
A new type of compressor, called Scroll Compressor, makes it efficient and economical.
Typically, the cost of such system can be recouped in 10 to 12 years.
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cyberandy1 year, 4 months ago
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Good intro article to solar power and energy. Solar is one of the many ways to provide alternative energy. If we keep up our alternative energy research and testing, I firmly believe we are on our way to non-dependency on foreign oil!
In the mean time we gotta also learn to drive better...Most people on the road don't know how to drive efficiently! For example, people would keep their foot on the gas pedal when a red light is in front of them...they would FINALLY hit the brakes at the very last 50 feet or so! Relax and learn to coast a bit if you see a red light! =)
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