Top Stories Facts on Solar Power The world is facing a lot of problems including that of environmental concerns like pollution and global warming. Despite these problems, people should not despair. In every problem, there is always a solution and this solution has been available for many years now. It’s just that many people fail to realize its importance and efficacy. Researchers and scientists have already discovered solar power many years ago but because of the lack of technological knowledge, the idea was not pursued. Solar power was mainly used for powering small electrical devices. But now, with the great technological advancements, people are hoping that solar power will soon become widely accessible even to ordinary individuals. In the US, solar power is used in the different states but it it’s not that prevalent. Huge solar panels are quite expensive and ordinary people can’t afford to pay for them. You can now find solar power kits which are less costly and the price range from $200 to $500. Before you consider using solar power, here are some facts that you need to be aware of: 1. Albert Einstein received a Nobel Prize in 1921 for his experiments on photovoltaic and solar power. 2. Silicon from a ton of sand can be used in photovoltaic panels to generate the same amount of electricity that a 500,000 T of burning coals can produce. 3. 10,000 US households are now using solar energy to power their homes. 4. John Herschel (British Astronomer) was able to cook food by using solar power 200 years ago during his African journey. 5. In 1982, the first large scale power plants was opened in California. 6. If you can use solar power in your home’s heating system, you can slash the electric bill by 50%. 7. In the last thirty years, the price of solar panels has dropped considerably by at least 200%. Solar power kits can now be purchased from $200-$500. 8. In the year 2000, USDOE claimed that solar power is almost perfect (99%) in San Francisco; since California gets a lot of sunlight, 200 megawatts of green electricity can be generated if all the rooftops of county buildings and homes are covered with PV panels. By including school buildings, an added 1,500 megawatts is achievable. The generated power is enough to cover the city’s electrical needs during an entire day. 9. Germany is now using solar power despite its undesirable climate. The energy generated during sunny days is stored in batteries. 10. Energy from the sun travels for approximately 8 minutes to reach Earth. If you’re interested in solar power and you want to try it out, you can start with a solar power kit. It is affordable and easy to assemble. The materials can be purchased from local hardware stores and the guides are easy to understand as well. Make sure that you purchase a kit that is manufactured by a prominent and trusted company to ensure efficiency. Some manufacturers also provide warranty for 10-15 years; take advantage of these great deals. The facts mentioned earlier will help you to decide whether you can benefit from solar power or not. If you live in an area where there is lots of sunlight all throughout the year, solar power is an excellent choice. Solar power is free and clean. After your initial investment, you no longer have to pay for the energy.

A Bright Future for Solar Energy: An Alternative Energy Source I was first introduced to solar energy in the movie, Race the Sun with James Belushi and Halley Berry in the lead. It was a story about low- income and under achieving Hawaiian students encouraged by their teacher to join the Solar Car race. In the movie, a car shaped like a cockroach and covered with solar panels used the sun’s rays as an alternative energy source to run the car. Solar energy is the light and the heat from the sun. Solar energy is free and its supplies are unlimited. There are n air and water pollution caused about by using solar energy. But there is still some impacts on the environment although indirect. Photovoltaic cells used to convert sunlight into electricity uses silicon and also produce some waste materials. There are also large solar thermal farms and these farms can also be harmful to the environment and desert ecosystems if not properly managed. Solar energy can be used on different aspects. Solar energy can be used in agriculture. Greenhouses (which is entirely different from greenhouse gas) convert solar light to heat to be maximized in enhancing the growth of plants and crops. Greenhouses has been around since the Roman times and modern greenhouses were built in Europe in 16th century. Greenhouses are still an important part of horticulture nowadays, Daylight systems are also being used to maximize the energy released by the sun. It is used to provide interior illumination replacing the artificial lighting. Daylight systems include sawtooth roofs, light shelf, skylights, and light tube. Daylight systems when they are properly implemented can reduce lighting-related energy consumption by 25 percent. Solar energy can also be developed into solar thermal technologies which can be used for water heating, space heating, space cooling and process heat generation. Solar energy can also be used to distil water and make saline or brackish water potable or drinkable. The solar water disinfection or SODIS involves exposing water-filled plastic polyethylene terephthalate or PET bottles. This process takes a long time, since the exposure time varies on the weather conditions. It requires a minimum of six hours to two days during days with overcast conditions. Currently, there are two million people in developing centuries use SODIS for their daily drinking water needs. Also sunlight can be converted into electricity using photovoltaics or PV. PV has been mainly used to power small and medium-sized things like a calculator powered by a single solar cell. There are homes powered by photovoltaics. Using solar energy for water and space heating is the most widely use application of solar energy. While ventilation and solar air heating is also growing in popularity. There are three main ways in using solar energy. The main way of using and converting solar energy is by using the solar cells. Solar cells convert light directly into electricity. Solar cells are also called photovoltaic or photoelectric cells. Meanwhile, solar furnaces use a huge array of mirrors to concentrate on the Sun’s energy into a small space and produced very high temperatures. Solar furnaces are also called “solar cookers”. A solar cooker can be used in hot countries to cook food. With all the benefits if using solar energy, there is still a downside for this alternative energy source. It does not work during night time. The cost of setting up solar stations is expensive, but the benefit of using solar energy when accumulated is so much more.
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Why Use Solar Energy?

Perhaps everything in the world is fine with your life. The last thing you care about are trees, fresh air and clean water. Heck, the water shows up every time you turn on a faucet, the heat comes on when it's cold, the light switch brings you light. What's there to worry about? Consider that this is just the problem. If you don’t care for the environment, the faucet may not bring you clean water, the heat may not go on and the car certainly will not start. If the environment is kept clean and left to do what it was intended to do, everything will continue to work fine. But get in its way and everything you thought was fine won’t be for long.



One way to accomplish the goal of keeping all the comforts of home working properly is by using other sources of power generation like the sun, not generating nasty things that get in the way of the environment doing its job. Current sources of power come from dead things like old forests gone millennium ago. Environmentally responsible power, heat and transport come from living or energized things like water and oxygen molecules. Sun can be turned into electricity and used to power your car, heat your home and generate your light. But to make the process work, you need to be able to see the sun, which means caring for the environment and not getting in its way.



Cost savings



One of the best things about caring for the suns ability to do its job is that it saves you money in the long run. Once solar systems are purchased and installed, they cost little if anything to operate. In most instances, the government will even help to pay for the upfront costs of installing the system through tax incentives. Additionally, power companies in most regions are required to pay you for energy that you have generated and not used. Yes, you read correctly, the power company will pay you!



Profitable



In most instances, 70% of the northern hemisphere can generate enough solar power to run and heat their homes with existing solar systems. This means that whatever is left over goes back to the power grid if you so choose. Just think of your power meter running backwards. The extra power you need for that cloudy day is stored in ever more efficient batteries. Most current users indicate that the use of solar systems only takes a little thought in power management.



Off the grid

Depending upon how you feel about the topic, one of the better reasons to use solar power is that you can take yourself off the "grid" so to speak. Many people don’t enjoy being a part of the social collective that is interconnectivity. Going solar takes you away from this one aspect of community and puts you closer to self reliance.



Versatile



Even though the solar power generation systems of today have come a long way to providing power, heat and a host of other services there is a long way to go. This is not to indicate, however, that solar power is not currently versatile in form and function. Solar panels can currently be formed into thin sheets to for car top electric powered cars. They can cover suburban rooftops and not be noticed, unlike those 1970’s units. Costs are also coming down almost as fast as the flat screen TV’s of today. Flat screens that solar power can power up through the use of a process called photovoltaic’s.



Personal responsibility



Past the cost savings and environmental benefits that solar power brings you should consider using it because you are part of a larger social order that will procreate. The human species has not been around for all that long and is doing its best to end its run in one way or another. If you would like to give your children’s children a better shot at continuing the human species run on this planet solar power is one small contribution that you can make all by your little self.

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Solar Panels - The magic behind this environmentally friendly power source and why its sensible to buy them now

Solar panels can be used to harness the energy of the sun to some other type of energy. The power produced using solar panels will be available in the form of heat (to heat a building for example) or electricity which can be used to power anything from a small light, radio, computer, cell phone to a complete business.

Solar panels are a great way to cut energy costs and to lower your carbon emissions, and to become more self-sufficient. They are now becoming extremely popular in urban areas where alternative energy advocates and law makers are creating incentives for this friendly and quiet alternative energy source. The state of Colorado was one of the first states offering massive rebates on the up-front cost in acquiring and implementing a residential solar system. Other states are slowly following.

After the panels are installed, energy from the system will be used to power the house, or, when the energy  being made in excess of demand, diverted for use on the grid, where it is purchased back by the electrical power company. There may be times when you  actually can make money from your panels. With rebates factored into the initial cost it will generally take from fifteen to twenty years to get back the initial expense, at which time you will essentially be generating power from the sun at no cost. If the prices of solar panels drop it will be even sooner then that.

One little-known fact, however, is that solar panels are initially contributory to greenhouse emissions because it takes power to manufacture a solar panel, that this energy is very often fossil-based, and front-end loaded, and that therefore there is a time period during which the solar panel has actually added to carbon emissions rather than detracted from them. Until such time as the solar panel has produced energy equivalent to the energy used to manufacture it (its fossil-emission payback period) it is actually a contributor to greenhouse gas emissions. This fossil-emission payback period is generally considered to be five to ten years.

Low power solar panels are normally available in 12 v or 14 v configurations, while high power panels are available in 24 volt. As solar panels are DC, you will usually need a power inverter that changes it from low-voltage as Direct Current (DC)to another-voltage Alternating Current (AC) to change it to be compatible with the voltage and type that feeds both the home and the grid.

Conventional solar panels are constructed using twin sheets of semiconducting silicon, combined with phosphorus and boron atoms. Amorphous silicon solar cells are a highly powerful, emerging array of photovoltaics that differ in output, structure, and manufacture than traditional photovoltaics that use crystalline silicon. The H-AS solar panels are produced in the same way, but they are made just 1 micrometer in depth by laying down polymorphous silicon at very high pressures and temperatures.

Solar panels are normally maintenance free and many manufacturers will supply a guarantee of electrical output often for as long as 20 years.

Solar panels are installed on whichever side of your house that gets the maximum exposureto the sun. In areas south of the equator this would be the north-facing, and in areas north of the equator its the south-facing aspect.






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Formula to Estimate How Many Solar Panels You Need

If you are interested in solar energy and are wondering whether or not you can


afford to install a solar electric (or photovoltaic, PV) system in your home, you

will need to know how many solar panels it will take to deliver the electricity you

need. The reality is that there are several variables that affect the size of the

solar electric system you will need. Each system has site-specific requirements,

and there is no one-size-fits-all answer. It is much more complicated than it

seems, especially if you are planning a system that will provide 100 percent of

your electrical energy needs.

But if you have just started your exploration into the possibilities of adding solar

panels to your home, you probably would like to have at least a ballpark

estimate of how many panels your project would need. So here is a way to

calculate a very rough estimate (emphasis on "very rough") of the wattage that

your solar array will need to deliver using a few basic numbers.

Formula to Estimate How Many Solar Panels

This is a basic and rough formula you can use to estimate the number of solar

panels your house would need, based on your family's history of energy

consumption. Detailed explanations follow, and there is a blank worksheet you

can print out at the end of this report:

Formula to Estimate How Many Solar Panels

Your Solar Electric System Will Need

Copyright© 2009 - 2010 GreenPLR™.com. All rights reserved. 3

1 Average daily kilowatts of electricity used (from utility bills)

2 Multiply by 1000 (kilowatts x 1000 = watts)

3 Multiply by percentage to be provided by solar

4 Divide by solar insolation value

5 Multiply by 120% (to allow for normal energy loss within system)

6 Divide by solar panel peak wattage (per manufacturer)

7 Equals Number of solar panels needed (round up to next whole Number)


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Solar Power– A Must for Homes

‘Going green’ is the trend these days since the world is facing a lot of environmental problems specifically global warming. Electricity comes from fossil fuels which are being burned. The emissions contribute a lot to global warming and one way to address this issue is by using solar power for homes. Even the federal and state governments are now encouraging many homeowners to utilize solar power by offering grants and loans. Solar power is a must for homes and it is not just for the rich people.



Are you familiar with DIY solar power kits? The DIY kits are widely available in online stores and perhaps in local stores. All you need to do is shop around and find a suitable system that can work for your home.



Why is the solar power system a must for homes?



As mentioned earlier, the government is also supporting green energy through grants and loans. Aside from that, there are also incentives. For instance, if you spend around $20,000 on system installation, the state government will give you a 30% credit. This means that your next tax bill will decrease by 30% of $20,000 which is $6,000. The credit can also be extended to the following year as long as the amount is covered fully.



Once you install the system, it requires minimum maintenance. Make sure that you also clean and clear it properly. You can consult a professional who knows a great deal about solar power systems and have yours checked annually. Most homeowners do little work on their systems and this is a great advantage.



Sunlight is available for all and since fossil fuels are depleting, it is an excellent option. If you install a system for your home, you will simply need to invest once and after that, you can now benefit as long as the system is working properly. Your electricity bills will surely be reduced and so you will have smaller bills every month. You can use the solar power system for your outdoor lights, garden lights and features, and even for indoor use as long as the inverter is big enough.



Solar panels are one of the most popular solar power systems used today. If blackouts are quite common in your area, it would really help a lot if you install solar power. That way, even if other homes don’t have electricity, your home can still have electricity. Solar panels are reliable as well as the other systems available today. Most manufacturers also provide warranty and so you can expect the solar panels to be durable. You won’t hear any noise since the panels are working quietly while producing the needed energy.
Most of all, with solar power systems, you can help in saving the environment. You can help in decreasing pollution and the degradation of the environment. The power systems can last for decades with proper maintenance and care. If you’re interested to go green, don’t hesitate to install a solar power system for your home. This is the best time to make a choice – a choice that can have a significant impact to the world. After installation of the system, you can now enjoy a continuous supply of green electricity.


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Common Solar Power Systems for Homes

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