STRONGER EFFORTS TO SAVE THE ENVIRONMENT
The advance in the effort to save the environment has given solar energy an important role. It is perhaps one of the most easily usable and most convenient of the renewable energy sources (which include as well,wind and water), since the beginning of time solar energy has been used for a source of heating. As an example, in the 1830’s a solar energy cooker was used on a safari and since then, many other uses for solar energy have been found, and nearly everyone should take advantage of of these uses.
Of course,the most common of the uses of solar energy is as a power source. From the 1970’s, people have been installing home home solar systems on their roofs and then using the resulting accumulated power to run their households with. While having enough home solar panels to collect enough power that will run an entire house may not have been all that common then, it can be done. Many of these types of solar powered homes run their appliances and other needs directly off the solar panel systems power during the day, and use power that was stored from the solar cells in batteries at night. This way, the homeowner can avoid ever having to use power that was generated by a non-renewable resource.
One other way to use solar energy, is to use solar power to heat your hot water. These hot water systems can either use passive solar energy (in the case of heating a tank of water by leaving it out in the sun) or by using solar collectors with a heat transfer fluid. These home solar systems require the owner of the home to install solar panels, behind which run tubes filled with fluid. These tubes collect the heat from the sun and transfer it into the fluid, these tubes, filled with the heated fluid, then run around a water storage system, and the heat from the fluid is transferred into the water. Another way is to have water running through the tubing and have it obtain the sun’s heat directly, this heated water is then pumped into swimming pools, so that pool owners will not need to run a pool heater to keep their water warm.
Oveer the last 10 or so years, the solar manufacturers started to develop new, creative applications for solar power . One such development is the portable solar panel, a popular product used on RVs by vacationers. On a smaller scale, there are solar panel packs that fold out like a small ledger and are used to power up anything from laptops to cell phones. As time passes, new products along this line are expected to continue to come on the market.
It doesn’t matter which of the home solar power uses you choose to implement in your own home or life, even a small use of solar power over traditional power sources can help the environment. The more we can use solar energy, the less dependent we become on non-renewable resources, and the more we help the Earth.