Solar & Wind Power

A new kind of material is being used for glass in hardwood conservatories. It is called Celsius Performance Glass which is a new type of coated smart glass. It is excellent for use in conservatory roofs.

Celsius Performance Glass brings to people the best of both worlds. It helps keep you warm in the winter and cool in the summer. In addition, the Celsius glass is very easy to clean. Plus a further benefit is that the insulation of sound is improved greatly.

A touch of blue tint in the glass along with the right technological features helps reduce unwanted glare from the glass in the conservatory. This helps users enjoy the benefits of the Celsius glass and hardwood conservatory to its fullest.

Celsius is one of the few glazing products on the market that offers a combination of heat reflection and thermal insulation. This helps produce a conservative form of energy during a time when the need to be energy efficient is most crucial.

What helps improve the efficiency of this Celsius glass conservatory is the use of a special coating which helps entrap the heat inside a home if it is reflected back into the property. For this reason Celsius has a U value of only 1.4.

The special coating of the Celsius glass now more popular in hardwood conservatories reflects approximately 72% of solar energy. This is three times the amount of energy that standard glass reflects. It has the ability to reflect that large amount of solar heat can prevent conservatories from overheating during hot weather.

The other benefit associated with using Celsius glass is that it helps reduce the impact of outside noise levels. A Celsius glazed roof can insulate more than two times of the sound of a standard 25mm glazed polycarbonate roof.

Another benefit of the Celsius roof is that rainwater is able to clean the dirt more effectively than standard glass. The rainwater takes off most of the dirt and grime and helps reduce the amount of unwanted deposits and helps lower the amount of regular cleaning that is needed.

In addition, the surface of Celsius glass is up to 5 degrees warmer than those of regular glass panes. This is said to help deduct condensation in glass more than in normal types of glass.

The use of Celsius glass helps those who use it reduce their electric bills even more.

When it comes to building hardwood conservatories you can find ample information online about Celcius glass.

Charles Turner
http://www.articlesbase.com/home-improvement-articles/celsius-glass-and-hardwood-conservatories-62379.html

Did you know that if you increase the humidity ratio in your house, you will feel warmer? It would seem that the old-timers knew this long before science announced it. They always stood the kettle on top of their wood-burning cook stove to steam away into the atmosphere all day long.

By keeping your home at a humidity level of twenty to forty percent, you can make yourself feel warmer! This increase of the moisture in your air could increase the heat index in your home by as much as eight degrees. This means if you usually keep it cool at sixty eight degrees, you can turn your thermostat down to sixty and still feel warm.

Tips like this may be important this winter, as we are being warned that the winter will be four percent colder than last year. The United States Energy Department has also warned that heating costs will be up this winter. Due to a large increase in prices, oil heating will be up by thirty one percent and natural gas heating bills will be up by eighteen per cent.

Before you rush out to find an axe to chop wood, and pick up the phone to get the chimney swept, won’t help. An open fireplace will actually lose your heat as fire needs oxygen to burn and all the warm air from your room is sucked up the chimney..

The first thing to do is to try and draft-proof your house. Or maybe go out and buy thermal underwear! Well, of course you can definitely drop your thermostat by a degree or two if you are wearing warmer clothes in the winter time.

Let’s consider some of the tips that the Energy Department and others suggest. If you have rooms you do not use, close the door and turn off the thermostat. Try heating the bathroom only for the times when you have a shower or a bath, then turn off the heat. In hallways, keep closet doors closed.

Insulation is the first thing to check. Is there a place where you feel a cold spot in your house? Is your attic thoroughly insulated? How about the interior walls, between the dry-walling? If your garage is attached, insulate the wall between your garage and the house

If it is a sunny day, turn off the heat and open the blinds. It may be cold outside, but the sun’s radiation can still heat your living room! Keep an eye on the late afternoon cool-down time and then turn up the heat and close the blinds.

Be sure to seal all your duct leaks. This is a very common waste of money, in fact, the Energy Department claim that a typical duct system loses approximately 25% to 40% of your furnace’s energy.

is forecasting a large increase.The U.S. Energy Department also points out that most homes use If you have natural gas you could supplement it in one of two ways. If you live in a warm place, you could look into the possibility of solar heating.

Another option is wood. Although an open fireplace is not cost-effective, there are some air-tight stoves which can heat large areas of the home. Also they are not usually decorative as most have a black cast-iron door. However, whilst not esthetically pleasing, they will give out a cozy old fashioned heat and that will please your bank account. They may raise an environmental question mark, but at least you will not see your breath in the morning!

Alan Olson
http://www.articlesbase.com/home-improvement-articles/steam-out-the-cold-264664.html

When planning your new house, an energy efficient green house floor plan would be an excellent alternative to a traditional stick built home. One improtant thing to consider is the orientation of your home on the property. One way to gain energy savings is to situate the house toward the northwest and use fewer openings and heavier walls on that side.

The house should open up to the southeast in order to take advantage of solar heat. Use louvers to block harsh summer sun angles and also allow weak angled winter warmth. With a southeast orientation, the slope of the main roof should face southwest with solar panels placed on that side.

Another way to save money is in the configuration and construction of the house. Heavy mass should be used on the north or northwest side in a green house floor plan to block the winter cold. It also is an efficient way to run plumbing and HVAC. The roof may be designed to collect rainwater in large barrels or cisterns which will cut down on city water costs.

The interior of a green house floor plan should be open and spacious to allow for natural airflow from open windows and stragically placed panels. This type of design cuts down on the need for air conditioning by making use of wind currents to bring fresh air into the home. Pick out the most energy efficient doors and window you can afford since they will provide an excellent return on you investment in lower energy bills month after month.

The true beauty of a green house floor plan is the ability to live “off the grid” with only a few extra features. A combination of features such as rain water collection,gray water reuse, solar panels and wind power with battery back up will afford a better lifestyle that is also easier on Mother Nature. With careful design and planning you can make your new home easier on the environment with a green house floor plan.

Rebecca Welch
http://www.articlesbase.com/advertising-articles/green-house-floor-plan-build-an-energy-efficient-home-52898.html

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Hello
I intend to buy 200-200watt solar power to take to a remote part of Asia.l hope to use it for 3 months to power our Laptop, TV, Microwave, Mobile phones, printer, Lighting, Fan etc.
Does anyone know where I can buy?Thanks
Category

Something sounds wrong. It’s a remote area, yet you will have mobile phones, internet connection, and TV? If it’s a place that has this kind of thing, it probably has grid power. If not, you should look into buying a gas-powered generator when you get there.

Portable solar power, the kind that’s really useful, is not cheap, and I noticed that your question has the word, “affordable.” A system that puts out 200 watts is not hard to find, but the kind of run time you will get powering a small TV is maybe 20 minutes, powering a laptop, maybe half an hour. And then, it would take 7-10 sunny days to charge itself up again. Such a system has no chance of powering most microwave ovens. That’s what you get for $500. You would scale up if you want more runtime.

If you buy a rigid solar panel of 200W when you get there, you could use it to charge two car batteries, and run an inverter off those. That would give you several hours of runtime, but would not be portable at all. I would expect to spend $2000 on such a setup, and donate it to my host when I left.

The best advice I can give you may be to live as the natives do. That will make your experience richer, anyway. If they use kerosene lamps, or open fire, then do your work by that light. If they cook in an underground pit, or with a solar oven, or eat most of their food raw, you do that, too. All of the appliances you list sound unnecessary, except possibly the laptop, and only if it’s used to control or automatically gather data from some equipment. To take notes, there’s always pen and paper.

I have seen and heard about these companies that will install solar power panels on your roof and they claim depending on how sunny it is where you live that your electricity bills will be drastically reduced and you could even generate so much power that your electric meter will spin in reverse and the power company will pay you for the excess power generated. So, my question is, how much does one of these solar power arragements cost?

My colleague in San Jose, California installed a solar photovoltaic system on his house several years ago.

His installed cost was a little over $30,000.

The peak capacity of the system was 3,000 watts.

His annual production of electricity has been approximately 4,000 kilowatt hours per year.

He financed the system with a second loan on his house with an interest rate equal to the prime rate.

That interest rate is adjustable and has gone up to 8.25 % per year.

His interest cost on the loan is $2,475 per year.
($30,000 times .0825 = $2,475)

His interest cost per kilowatt hour is approximately: 61.88cents per kilowatt hour.

That does not include maintenance (which has been significant) or depreciation.

($2,475 divided by 4,000 kilowatt hours = 61.88 cents per kilowatt hour).

I think that 61.88 cents per kilowatt hour is rather high.

The utility company that I use is one of the most expensive utility companies in the United States and they only charge me 17.3 cents per kilowatt hour of electricity.

That is much less than it costs my colleague for electricity from his solar photovoltaic system.

I realize that it is very difficult to get accurate cost data on these systems. Recently I had the opportunity to talk with a salesman who sells these systems.

The first question that I asked him is why is it so hard to get accurate cost data on these systems.

The salesman replied with what I would say was rather remarkable candor.

The salesman said that if people knew how little electricity these systems produce, how much maintenance they require and how much they really cost nobody would buy them.

Here in Silicon Valley we have a term for people who absolutely must have the latest technology no matter what it costs.

They are called "early adoptors"

Who are early adoptors?

They are people who have more money than they know what to do with. They must have the very latest gadget and they do not care how much it costs.

Solar photovoltaic systems are definitely systems for"early adoptors"

Solar photovoltaic systems are not ready yet for the mainstream public.

Transparent plastic swimming-pool covers called solar heat sheets have thousands of small air-filled bubbles that resemble lenses.

The bubbles in these sheets are advertised to focus heat from the sun into the water, thereby raising its temperature.

Do you think these bublles direct more solar energy into the water? Defend your answer.

The bubbles will act as insulators being air filled – but focusing the light like a lens is not going to increase the toatl amount of energy entering the water – (they will only increase localised heating)