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When it comes to converting your home into a solar home, there are several alternatives, because not all homes have the same problems, the same requirements or the same potential sustainable power sources. Therefore, if you are going to try a total conversion or even get off the grid completely, you will either need to do some do research or call in an expert to make a survey for you.

If you call in an expert, try to get an independent one, so that you can work out the prices of satisfying your energy needs yourself. You will have to pay for such a report, of course, but you could carry out a survey yourself with a bit of work on your part. In order to produce a solar home, you may find the rest of this piece interesting.

There are fundamentally two types of solar design: passive and active solar energy. Passive solar energy can be used to supply heating, cooling and natural light for your home. Active solar energy is used for powering home appliances, tools and lighting. It is the perfect combination of these two kinds of solar energy that you will try to achieve, if you are trying to convert your home into a solar home.

You can make use of passive solar energy methods in many ways, although they are more easily built in during the actual construction phase of a new home. The largest area of glass should face south or be within 30 degrees of due south. This will catch the maximum amount of heat. This heat can then be distributed around the house by stone floors and stone walls.

The central heating ducting and furnace fan can be used to assist, if need be. If the house becomes too hot in the summer, awnings or even solar panels could be dropped down in order to put the windows in shadow. When thinking of passive solar energy, you should try to think of ways of providing warmth and coolness without using electricity. For example, a skylight at the top of the stairs will allow the warmest air in the house to escape, since hot air rises. This will cause cooler air to be sucked into the house at lower levels.

The other feature of a solar house is the generation of electricity by the deployment of solar panels grouped into solar arrays. Solar panels make use of photovoltaic cells to convert light into energy. This energy can then be used to power ordinary electrical appliances of all kinds or some or all of it can be stored in batteries for later use. Conversion from AC (alternating current) to DC (direct current) and back again, if necessary, is a simple matter.

Solar energy can also be used to heat water for the pool or for the home. The most usual type of system uses pipes filled with a type of anti-freeze to collect the sun’s heat and pass it on to tanks of water by means of a heat exchanger.

A solar home uses energy efficiency to reduce the need for heating, cooling and electricity. The use of higher grade insulation, more energy efficient windows, kitchen appliances and lighting than those used in traditional homes, will save you a lot of money and energy. As you can see, some of these changes, especially the passive ones are structural, so hard to apply in many homes, but there is always something you can do to cut your energy bills and slowly convert your home into a solar home.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on many topics, but is currently involved with a favourite topic – alternative power sources. If you are interested in Sustainable Energy At Home, please click through to our site.

Until approximately a hundred years ago in the West, people only had recourse to renewable energy for heat and light for their homes. They burnt wood and sometimes coal or peat (OK, fossil fuels) and got up when the sun came up and went to bed with the sun as well. In, fact a large part of the world’s population still lives like that.

Things changed with mechanized industry and night shifts. Electricity producers sold the populace on being able to do more instead of just sleeping when it got dark, and the Western population got hooked on buying huge amounts of energy, mostly electricity and engine fuel, which was usually produced from oil and coal.

This idea soon travelled around the world and with rising prosperity came emulation and other countries wanted the same. Now we are in the sad situation where we have to confess that we rode the fossil fuel gravy train to its last stop without thinking about what we would use when fossil fuels ran out.

This is where the typical citizen comes in. You have to think about how you want to draw energy in the future. Do you want to be powered by keeping sucking unrenewable resources out of the Earth, or do you want to have as little to do with it as possible? Would you rather have everything you have now, but know that the resources that are powering your lifestyle are renewable?

If, like millions of others around the globe, you would rather say ‘No!’ to conventional power production methods, then you have to take a stand. But not only in words, you really have to do some something about it physically.

This will mean paying a lot of money up front, which may not be a problem for you or you may even think that taking a stand is worth looking for a bank loan. These are commendable feelings, but I would like to suggest that there is another way to self-sufficiency.

You could build your own!

Why not? The technology has been around for decades and is pretty straightforward. Most moderately capable teenagers can assemble a bank of photovoltaic cells into a solar panel and then plug that into your home’s electrical system. And if a teenager can manage it, so can you. All you (and the teenager) will need is a solar panel kit and a schematical diagram. A plan in other words.

A solar panel kit can be bought locally from a Do-It-Yourself shop or from the Internet. A typical solar panel will take a few hours to assemble and will produce 100 watts of electrical energy. The electricity produced from these panels is then passed through an inverter that changes the current from DC to AC, making it usable by household appliances and the utility grid.

Do yourself and the planet a favour, get off the grid and start saving money and the planet’s resources, you will be surprised how straightforward it is once you get going. And do not forget, you can do it in stages of, say, one 100 watt panel a month until you hit self-sufficiency. It is not a question of ‘All or Nothing’.

Owen Jones, the author of this article, writes on many topics, but is currently involved with a favourite topic, types of renewable energy. If you are interested in Sustainable Energy At Home, please click through to our site.

You can live off the grid. You only have to have the grid to buy electricity if you cannot generate your own. Living on the grid has made too many of us lose our self-sufficiency. We slavishly buy energy off the big providers and pay through the nose for it at the end of the month.

How many days a month do you have to work just to pay your electricity bill? What could you do with that time or money if you did not have to use it to pay for your electricity?

The fact is that you can come off the grid and you can even sell your surplus, home-made electricity back to the grid. This is not likely to make you a lot of money, but it is a nice feeling after only paying out for decades. However, the savings of life off the grid do not end there. There are ecological savings and the saving of human life too.

Soldiers would not be sent to fight for oil if we were not so reliant on it. The fact is, that if more people came off the grid, the price of oil would fall, because demand would go down and the oil-producing countries that think they have a strong hold on the West would lose their power. And that can not be a bad thing either, can it?

It is simplest for people who live in their own houses to come off the grid. They have more jurisdiction over their own premises and can make their own decisions about what to do with it. Drill a hole here, cut a hole there – that sort of thing. Alterations or home improvements. Life off the grid is also most beneficial for families as they use the most electricity.

The most common techniques of attaining a life off the grid is by the use of solar panels, hydropower and wind turbines or even good, old-fashioned wind mills. These devices are still expensive to buy and very expensive to have installed. A 2010 study in the UK estimated that it would take 10 years to recover the investment of a professional installation of energy-making equipment.

However, you could remove the expensive labour element by making and installing the units yourself! This opportunity is accessible to anyone in the world as the diagrams and plans for making these units are available on the Internet from specialist alternative energy web sites and the components are practically every day items.

You will be able to get them in a hobbyist or DIY store. They are also very easy to put together – most teenagers could do it and so could you. If you do not fancy that way, you could purchase a self-assembly kit.

Once you have started to become free of the grid, you can make life off the grid even more rewarding by replacing your appliances, as and when needed, with low energy models. If you approach life off the grid wisely, you could add new energy producing units every month until you do not get any electricity bills any more and then whatever further savings you can make will be sold back into the grid.

Owen Jones, the writer of this article, writes on many topics, but is currently involved with a favourite topic, renewable energy advantages. If you are interested in Sustainable Energy At Home, please click through to our site.