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The Sun and Solar Power Trivia

admin — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 23:35:09 +0000

Solar power truly seemed to be the solution to our ever increasing demand for energy that sees more and more fossil fuels burned every day. The sun?s energy has been proven to be the strongest in our galaxy and dwarfs even the strongest nuclear power plants combined! It is thanks to ever improving solar technology that we are able to harness its clean renewable power potential and turn it to multiple alternative energy applications. Below are some interesting facts about solar?

Solar applications are ancient

The use of solar energy dates back in the earliest human civilizations. Though the use was not as complex as it is today, ancient people depended on the sun for life & so worshipped as their God, the most powerful source they knew. Ancient civilizations had already used the sun?s heat for comfort during cold days; ancient engineering has shown that people were trying maximizing the sun?s ray patterns to heat and light their homes.

Leonardo Da Vinci, the father of solar hot water systems

Leonardo Da Vinci was one of the first to use solar power in a complex manner; Da Vince used concave mirrors to amplify the heat of the sun to boil water. Thus the idea of solar hot water system was born.

Earliest Solar Panels

Aleksandr Grigorievich Stoletov invented the very first solar cells based on the phenomena called the Photoelectric Effect by Heinrich Hertz but efficiency was still an issue back then. The modern solar panels that you are using today are owed to Russell Shoemaker Ohl who patented the technology in 1946, and solar cells continued to evolve up to this day, though more progress has been made in the last couple of years than in all that time previously.

Largest Solar Farm

The title for the largest solar farm in the world belongs to the Germans; the Bavaria Solar Park in Germany provides a maximum system output of 12 MW and powers about 3500 homes.

The Green Figure

A typical home solar panel (1KW) can save about 170 lbs of coal emitting 300 lbs of greenhouse gases. Do the math? and you?ll see how much carbon we can reduce.

The Sahara Dessert

If we could layout solar panels in the entire stretch of the Sahara desert, they would be capable of generate a mind bugling 450 terawatts of energy; that is enough to power the entire Earth for 35 years!

The Colossal Sun

The normal temperature of the sun is 5700c and the Earth is at 20c. About a million Earths can fit inside the sun and still have room to move freely.. The sun is estimated to be at its 4 billionth birthday and is expected to last for another 4 billion years.

Efficient Renewable Energy Resource-Solar Power

admin — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 23:33:32 +0000

In this modern era with global warming and green house gases on the rise, it is actually required that one takes note of the importance of renewable energy resources to minimise carbon emissions and further harmful effects upon the environment. What could be a better way to do this than to start with your own home? Energy is expensive to acquire yet easy to waste, and using it for electricity and fuel takes its toll on the planet. Today, the greatest sources of energy have been fossil fuels, of which the three most commonly used are coal, petroleum and natural gas. Unfortunately, the combustion of fossil fuels releases pollution into the atmosphere and fossil fuels are non-renewable their availability will decline.
Solar power is now becoming ever more popular, and it is great fact is to see that so many people start to flock to getting this great alternative energy resource in the home. You might choose solar energy or wind energy as your most optioned renewable energy, but you could use them in combination to maximize your energy production and minimize your investment. Solar equipment is still hard to find, althought the work is easier than a decade ago. Now you will find that there are solar kits that you can buy with all you need, and the good news is that there are a few options out there. Also geo thermal power is the biggest clean and renewable energy resource on earth. It does not produce pollution particles because no fuel is burned and no harmful chemicals are released into the environment. The energy stored as geo thermal energy in the earth is so large that humans can not possibly use it up – not even in millions of years. Geothermal energy is the power which can be establised by the harnessment of the heat beneath the Earth’s surface. Deep wells are usually used to pipe steam and hot water from deep within the Earth, up to the surface.
Solar power is the conversion of sunlight into electricity. Sunlight can be converted directly into electricity using photovoltaics, or indirectly with concentrating solar power, which generally focuses the sun’s energy to boil H2O which is then used to provide power, and technologies such as the sterling engine dishes which use a sterling cycle engine to power a generator. Geothermal heat pump technology mainly focus on the Earth’s natural thermal energy, a renewable resource, to heat or cool a home or commercial building. Geothermal heating and cooling uses the relatively constant temperature of the earth to heat and cool homes and businesses with 40% to 70% less energy than basic conventional systems. While conventional furnaces and boilers completely burns a fuel to produce heat, geothermal heat pumps use electricity to simply rotate heat from the earth into buildings, allowing much higher efficiencies.

Solar power helps us to minimise cost by decreasing our consumption of electricity that we usually get from fossil fuel powered power plants. And these fossil fueled power plants are destroying our environment with the pollutants that they emit. Solar power does not produce any harmful toxins that would affect our health and the environment. Both solar and geo thermal heat offer environmentally friendly options and their disadvantages far out way their advantages. If you look at both systems though, solar offers distinct advantages. If you are really looking to upgrade your heating system and being earth-friendly is the basic necessary to you, then you should be considering geo thermal as an best alternative. With solar power you will not required any electricity from an outside source, so you can install it in any geographical location.

Push Your Architect for Green Solutions Solutions

admin — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 23:32:35 +0000

Architects are the gateway because of which most green technologies discover their way into the marketplace. The architect ‘specs’ special technologies manufactured by the manufacturers they are most familiar with into the plans for a challenge, then the person or organization contracting them fronts the charge, and it eventually ends up as a functioning factor of the residence. This is all perfectly and very good assuming the architect is aware of every single on the market green technology on the market place, but that’s of course not possible, so what you finish up spending for and using for your renewable vitality or efficiency challenge is inherently minimal by the extent of the architect’s know-how and study. In the end, this will mean you could conclude up with yesterday’s engineering if the architect gets lazy and you do not maintain them accountable for maintaining your project on the cutting edge of an market that is evolving rapidly in the direction of far more cost-productive, effective and environmentally helpful alternate options.

When taking on anything as ambitious as a full HVAC or lighting retrofit, a solar panel (or pv) set up, modest wind challenge, water consumption reduction effort or just about any other green know-how project, you shell out the architect handsomely to information you towards your most effective possibilities. Come to think of it, you shell out even much more for the supplies on their own. Really don’t you believe you ought to have some insight into the supplies that are planned for your residence and the firms that get to use your revenue as a way to showcase their wares?

GreenTechBuyer does, and we imagine you must be proactive about it by undertaking some analysis on your individual whilst keeping the hired architect accountable for the extent of theirs. Here’s how:

one. Don’t discredit on your own as incapable of understanding your possibilities. Immediately after all, you did handle to get all by yourself into a position to be in charge of this undertaking in the 1st site.

two. Go ahead and open up an net browser to do some poking about for the varieties of green technological know-how solutions you know you will use. It’s seriously not that complicated at a high degree. Need to have help choosing the correct terms? We know a webpage exactly where you can get matched the greatest green solutions companies…

three. Note a healthy combine of two or three business leaders and a couple of newcomers who seem to have merchandise or companies that fit the unique kinds of applications you’re attempting to get.

four. Ask the architect what merchandise they are planning to make use of for your challenge and why. Then abide by up by asking about how numerous tasks they’ve applied this solution for and more than how prolonged of a timespan.

5. If they’ve been making use of it for a long time on the vast majority of their tasks, that’s a red flag that they’ve stopped seeking for new and enhanced options. Now is the time to introduce some of the organizations and options you have found out on your personal.

6. Brace for defensiveness and a couple of guffaws about how you couldn’t possibly understand the market place of the implications of product or service assortment. Take into account, you’re the customer. They perform for you. Press on, and request that they humor you by shopping into the options you’ve introduced and re-enforce that you welcome other alternatives as nicely. It’s correctly acceptable to request solutions.

7. Be sensible. Architects truly are authorities, and if they shy away from the bleeding edge it really is mainly because they don’t want your undertaking to fail due to the bluster of becoming a as well-early adopter. The point is to push them to do their analysis, not to power anything at all down their throat and onto your roof.