Shifting Solutions

Solar panels on a roof are what most people envision when solar energy is discussed.

Portable home solar power systems, however, represents a new and expanding field.

A portable home solar system for power can be a great introduction to solar power use for people who are interested but are confused or overwhelmed by the thought. Systems available to the general public come in small sizes (to power laptops, cell phone, portable stereos, etc) and medium sizes (to power multiple small items or small portable appliances). Portable solar power systems are user-friendly. They require little to no wiring, with most systems being ready for immediate use. Other benefits include the fact that portable solar power allows an individual to access power outside of the national grid. These systems are also renewable and sustainable.

Portable solar power systems utilize small photovoltaic solar panels. These are housed in a variety of materials, depending on the size and intended use. Most small systems come in a polymer based carrying case that looks like a bulky briefcase. There are also sportier models that can be incorporated into hiking gear. Some models even roll up so they can be slid into a variety of cases and containers. A small battery-type pack can be used to jumpstart cars or boats.

Some medium portable solar power systems look like a small generator and come on a rolling stand. Others are roll up systems, similar to the ones in the smaller units. These medium systems can power appliances in RV’s, boats, or while camping. They can also power multiple small electronics at one time. A medium portable solar power system can be used in emergencies to power lights, radios, telephones, and other emergency items.

Regardless of the size, these portable systems are designed for outdoor use. They can handle temperatures ranging from -10°F to 140°F. Most systems are water resistant, but should not be submerged in water. The panels should be kept clean because dirty photovoltaic panels do not absorb solar energy efficiently. Most models come with meters to prevent damage caused by under or over powering. The systems work best when the battery powered electronic is fully charged at the start of use; it is more effective as a battery saver.

Many soldiers are being given portable solar power packs for use in the field. The military is also utilizing portable solar power on a larger scale that is not readily available to the average consumer. Use of low-maintenance portable energy takes one more burden off the soldiers. Portable solar power is also lighter than traditional battery packs, again lightening the soldier’s load.

There are many ways one can participate in the greening economy. If your budget is smaller than you like to install solar panels for home systems, then for just a few dollars you can play in the solar field with these small and fun products that can make your life easier as well.

Solar Landscaping Lights

We all care how our homes appear to others and landscaping is a big part of that. Solar landscaping lights are a popular and cost effective option for adding a little zing to your landscaping efforts.

Many people enjoy the look of lights in their landscaping. Whether you want to light a path to your door or the area around your pool, landscaping lights can heighten your night time enjoyment of your yard. You can choose from several options for lighting outdoors, but by far your best choice in this area are home solar power landscaping lights.

While you can choose from other different powering options for your outdoor lights, such as electric and battery powered, a choice of solar landscaping lights will definitely be the right one. Electric powered landscaping lights may seem economical and easy at first, but then you have to realize that they will add to your homes electric bill, as well as needing many dangerous extension cables and cords in order to obtain their power. Battery powered lights can be safer, but even more expensive, once you figure in the cost of batteries and the time and effort it takes to change them.

Solar landscaping lights work by recharging during the sunlight hours, and shining bright with that power at night. Solar panels are located on the lights, and these panels collect solar energy and charge a battery with that energy. The battery, in turn, powers the lights at night, eliminating the need for another power source. This is a very economical and eco-friendly way to light your yard area, and home solar power landscaping lights require little maintenance from you, the home owner.

You also have different options in styles of solar landscaping lights. Whether you would like to have a hanging solar lamp, a solar flood light above your garage, or even a solar security light that detects motion, there are options that can meet your needs. Solar post lights can be used to line a driveway or garden path to make your yard safer for nighttime use. Solar landscaping lights are available in a number of different wattages and sizes, so you can choose just what you need for your project. Most solar lights use LEDs, which are tiny but emit a strong light. They also take little energy to power, so your solar powered battery will last longer at night.

Choosing solar landscaping lights is a great way to help the environment, while you are also helping to beautify your home. Landscaping lights can add value to your property, while also making your yard more useful at night – all in the most economical way possible.

Click the link above to find out more information on powering your yard with a home solar system.

When you think of solar energy systems, you probably envision an eccentric homeowner living way out in the wilderness, far from the electrical grid and even farther from mainstream relevance. Well, 20 years ago that image might have been realistic. Technology has advanced at an astonishing clip, however, and solar is an increasingly viable form of energy in many parts of the country.

Before you build a solar panel system, take a look at your old electricity bills. Average out your usage to find the kilowatt hours of electricity you typically use in a year. Then study a solar array map, which can be found online. You’ll find that homes in the Southwest receive the most direct sunlight – somewhere between five and seven hours a day on average. The Pacific Northwest receives far fewer hours of direct sunlight – somewhere between two and four. This information should tell you something about the potential for harvesting solar energy in your region.

Passive solar design can make a home more comfortable in every season.

The winter sun can warm a home’s interior, while simple shading and thermal mass strategies can prevent summer overheating. The home designs on the following pages balance four primary building elements-orientation, windows, overhangs, and thermal mass-to optimize use of the sun’s energy. While these elements are found in most conventional homes, the designs included here put the right amount in the right places for maximal efficiency and performance. Most of them also provide ample south-facing roof space to accommodate the addition of solar hot water collectors and solar-electric arrays-part of a whole-house plan for energy efficiency and independence. Whether you’re having a builder construct your own home from these plans or building for a client, consider these best design bets.

Site Right

In the winter, the sun rises in the southeast, is low in the south sky at midday, and sets in the southwest in the middle latitudes in North America. In the summer, the sun rises in the northeast, is high in the south sky at midday, and sets in the northwest.

In all areas except the southern tip of Florida, choose a home site that receives full southern sun in winter and is unobstructed by trees, other buildings, or hillsides. Besides your own observations about shading during the seasons, site analysis tools can provide a quick, accurate assessment of your proposed building site (see Access). You can also use a compass to help find true north and south, but keep in mind that a compass points to magnetic north, which can vary by as much as 25 degrees from true north. This difference is called magnetic declination.

Read more on building plans and solar panel locations:

Read the rest of this article here http://www.homepower.com/view/?file=HP116_pg62_Rucker_Coleman

However when you consider going solar for your home , think about learning how to build your own solar panels, it’s not difficult as I’ve found out. You don’t have to be all that handy , just follow the easy to read instructions and watch the videos, they will show you, how to find the materials at the best prices, how to assemble them and how to install them on the roof and hook it all up to your home grid. Do this yourself for just a fraction of the cost of hiring a contractor.

Americans have treated freedom and happiness as virtually synonymous

If, from our nation’s founding onward, we Americans have treated freedom and happiness as virtually synonymous, my point is a really old one. We might do well to replace the maxims of Acton and even Nietzsche with one uttered by Roman statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero 2000 years ago: “Freedom is participation in power.”

If happiness lies in covering basic needs plus satisfying personal ties and finding meaning, society’s role is limited. It need only ensure that essential needs are met and provide opportunities to pursue personal relationships and meaning. Even a largely totalitarian government could do that. But, if we add power to the happiness equation, our agenda shifts. Maximizing happiness then requires engaging citizens in changing the rules and norms so that more and more of us are empowered participants. And, of course, joining with others in this exhilarating pursuit we achieve a double whammy: Such activity furthers the widely appreciated relational and meaning aspects of the happiness puzzle. ” Frances Moore Lappé wrote this article as part of Sustainable Happiness.

So, speaking of power and happiness, think of how happy you’d be if you had more control of your power, for your house hold that is. By building your own wind power generator and /or home solar system you can be free of the constantly rising cost of home energy, so that would give you the power and won’t you be happy! Click this link renewable energy systems to find out more about the freedom in the participation of power.

Offshore wind farm Lillgrund in the Øresund between Malmö and Copenhagen

Today, the increasing energy demand and the need for clean power generation leads everyone’s mind to the concept of renewable energy sources. The highly efficient, solid and reliable wind turbine offers a solution to meet energy needs and environmental awareness.

Landmark energy efficiency and green jobs bill

Go to Blog »for more of this article

Well the world is slowly waking up! But the ball is finally in motion, local governments are are starting to action to improve the quality of life with sustainable improvements. It’s only the beginning as new laws are passed and industry changes it’s attitude along with the mass population. But as a homeowner you can join the movement now by eliminating your electric bill and reducing the carbon footprint created by the local utilities in their power production methods. Build your own solar panels and create your own renewable energy system in a weekend and install it all yourself. Follow the easy DIY plans and vedios and in a weekend you can be saving energy costs with just a very little outlay of capital. Click the link ” home solar energy” and learn all about this amazing opportunity.

Solar Energy Hope, Floats on Collection Balloons

It’s said that hope floats, and for Israel that may literally be true. Joseph Cory a designer at Geotectura, Israel’s premiere environmental architecture firm has worked closely with an aerospace engineer, to develop floating solar balloons that are capable of collecting solar energy in very crowded city spaces and places where large solar panels are not a viable alternative. Potentially they good be put to good use in disaster-stricken areas as well.

These balloons are filled with helium and coated with a space-age fabric made from photovoltaic solar cells. The name of this project is SunHope and it’ promises to be a low-cost system that could collect solar energy and leave less negative impact on the environmental than other more traditional solar energy solutions.

Traditional solar systems, report Inhabitat, have many difficult barriers to resolve, IE: they require high initial investments, large land requirements, and an in-depth installation process. On the other hand, the Sunhope project can go around these problems by constructing low-cost photovoltaic arrays designed for vertical rather than the horizontal space.

“These solar balloons are as low-impact as power plants get, since their infrastructure is composed entirely of a control panel, a helium supply cable, and a power cable,” writes Inhabitat. They estimate that only one or two of these balloons would power your home and multiple balloons can be linked to power apartments and entire communities. Now don’t they just look so out of this world? Mighty pretty too!

Now I have a cabin that’s off the grid, this seem so Ideal to me for a way to provide the power I need so far out.,.l but also consider the humanitarian side, as these solar energy balloons could also provide power to tribes in the middle of the desert or people living in isolated islands; they can be connected to ocean-bound freighters, power homes in heavily forested areas; and since they are easy to deploy, we imagine they could offer quick power relief opportunities in disaster stricken areas.

Several prototypes have been developed to show that a 10 ft balloon could provide about a kilowatt of energy roughly equal to about 25 square meters of solar panels. The cost? About $4,000 per balloon, compared to the $10,000 for a solar field. With the rising costs of electricity in Israel and the world (our bill is the highest it has ever been this month), we can hardly wait until SunHope starts production.

If your interested in solar panel systems or a wind power generator and/or any type of reading material on Going Green or Sustainable living, visit my web site by clicking the highlighted link above.

Drops that gather one by one finally become a sea. ~ Persian Proverb

All too often we get so caught up in our everyday whirlwind of busyness on whats mostly very self serving activities …. making money. We tend to lose focus on how our actions impact other in the long run.

I’m no different and once in a while I receive a wake up call. So today I want to be a little less self serving ( I said a little not entirely ) and offer a piece of who I am at heart… after all, “who knows what would transpire if all people would speak the truth? It has never been tried….” Ernest Holms.

I’ve asked this question many times while I was growing up ” What if everyone did this or thought this way? It was a bi9t of a litmus test for my actions, it allowed be to see the greater impact my actions would have in the larger world. If some action or thought multiplied would it be harmful or beneficial, then I had to seriously consider if that was a productive, or negative course of action. It was my way of not minimizing my actions and their impact as a whole.

We have so many opportunities n to change the world by simply changing our own actions and thinkiing. Once one person ran a four minute mile, then, eventually, any good runner could achieve and surpass that mile stone. Once the barrier in mind was removed, what was once unachievable by anyone now became achievable by many.

Similarly, our actions have the ability to spread. I have noticed that if I am in public and take action, such as helping someone in need or picking up litter, I often see my nact

ions followed by others taking the same action.

We are like the drop of water in the Persian proverb above. When we lift up our consciousness, when our sights are raised higher, we create the catalyst for expansion in those around us.

Ok, here comes the self serving part…. My web site offers several ways we each can make an impact on our environment, by helping to reduce the carbon footprint we leave behind from energy production. By making and installing our own renewable energy systems such as solar panel systems or a wind power generator, we can effectively reduce the carbon left behind by the major power companies. As I said a above…One drop of water at a time can eventually make a sea. Your neighbors see what your about, and one or two of those copy you is all the difference in making the oportunity we have been given to brighten our environment a little at a time.

You may also enjoy the collections of books on this site dealing with sustainable energy such as this and more.

China is the awakening giant for many industries,

and as the world’s largest solar panel producer for the last two years, the country already is a major solar player. But now, some industry experts say, it’s expanding from being mainly a solar panel supplier to also becoming a substantial customer. That’s thanks to aggressive government policies like a subsidy for building-mounted photovoltaic systems which could pay up to 20 Chinese yuan (about $2.93) per watt for systems larger than 50 kilowatts, and one of the most aggressive renewable portfolio standards in the world. The country’s emergence as a solar consumer will effect the international solar industry, creating a massive market for solar products, as well as help China, which is soon expected to overtake the U.S. as the largest energy consumer in the world, find a cleaner solution for energy growth.

Everyday, there is more and more news on the solar industry. As you can see China is embracing this technology wholeheartedly. America soon will as well and already has begun implementing the use of solar systems on their energy grids. Moving on a Federal level can be a slow process and ultimately will end up costing the consumers at one point.

As home owners, we can stand alone and provide for ourselves. By learning how to build your own solar panels and or wind power generator and take your self off the power grid. Generate your own electricity, it’s easy to do. Click the link above and learn how you can save hundreds of dollars each month and even get the Utility companies to pay you for the excess energy you can produce with these systems.

Check it out today