Energy Independence! Catching Some Rays!

Concepts and studies in architectures that are most efficient and effective with energy use have been around for decades. Actual functional architecture that does this has been around for centuries. The ancient Greeks and Romans designed effective energy-efficient buildings more than 3000 years ago.

Similarly, the ancient Native Americans of the Southwest--notably those of the Anasazi, Navajo, Hopi, Acoma, and Pueblo peoples had ways of building their cliff-dwellings, their hogans, their mesa-top cities, and their multifamily pueblos to conserve heat in the winter and keep cool in the summer.

In the past century, energy and architectural research has used and enhanced building features such as thermal mass energy conservation, clerestory windows, airlocks, receiving areas, underfloor heating elements, heat exchangers, thermo-pane gas-filled windows, Tyvek moisture-barrier sheeting for walls, reflective window films, light-barrier window screens, better insulation, directional skylights, and other innovations.

Additionally, over the past 50 years, advances have been made in photovoltaic (solar cells) thanks to the research made primarily by NASA for satellite power sources. Advances in light-emitting-diodes (LED) have also greatly changed the lighting industry. You can now buy quite inexpensive flashlights (and other lighting devices) that consist of almost indestructable LED light sources and which use rechargeable batteries. The light emitted from LEDs is considerably more intense than from the same size incandescent or fluorescent bulb with considerably less energy use. This being the case, why don't houses have more skylights, more LED lighting applications, better insulation, better planning with regard to energy use, and so on? All developers should be required to have at least this bare minimum of energy conservation applications before being allowed to build a house. Also, thermosiphon water heaters (or even pump water heaters) and roof-mounted photovoltaic power cells should also be a major consideration for any new house. Sure, hook it up to the power grid. But if the house can function well without much dependence on the grid, that's also good.

Back in the 1970s (yeah, darn near *eons* ago!), there was an "energy crisis".. when certain suppliers decided to play games by tightening the supply and charging more for the crude. This caused long lines at gas stations and folks could buy their gas only on certain days depending on whether their license plates ended with an odd or even number (I guess the folks with personalized alphabetic plates were just plain out of luck, eh?). The government came up with all sorts of ideas--including the 55-mph speed limit (this is fine in little states like Rhode Island--where you can zip across the whole state at that rate; but it's a pain in states like New Mexico, Montana, Texas, or California where it's sometimes 200 miles between rest stops ). More and more Americans started buying fuel-efficient, but tiny Japanese cars and started to leave the huge, battle-ship-sized American jalopies to rust at the Pick-And-Pull.

The government also came up with "tax incentives" for folks to try solar devices. Solar water heaters, solar pool heaters, and all sorts of energy-efficient architecture popped up all over the country. Some of the stuff worked, and some of the stuff was just a scam used to bilk elderly folks out of their retirement cash.

Now, however, we are realizing that this can still happen to us. Again our dependency on oil is going to bite us in the rear if we don't do something quickly. This time, however, we have even better options. We have hybrid cars on our highways already. We have LEDs. We have photovoltaics that are many times more efficient than those available 20 to 30 years ago. We have better solar water heating devices and equipment. We have heat exchanger pumps. It is possible to build cars and homes and business buildings that use a mere fraction of the energy that the same used 40 years ago. And we have the Internet. With all the networking and telecommunications companies out there (Cisco Systems, Juniper Networks, ATT, Lucent, Avaya, Agere, and so on), there's no reason for most office workers to drive to work at all (at least not for more than a 10-minute/5-mile commute). Most meetings nowadays have folks calling in from around the world or at least from around the country. So, if you are going to be talking with folks in India and in Japan or Russia, why not do it from your home office? It saves gas and energy and still gets the job done!

Yup. With some aluminum cans, some duct tape, some plexiglass, and some flat-black spray paint, you can build your own solar collector.

Here's a great website that has all sorts of plans for creating your own solar cooker--click here.

For a quick and easy parabolic solar cooker, you can create something that looks like the cooker in this module's image--from two panels of 3/4" plywood cut in the parabolic shape and then notched to hold the barbeque skewer as shown. A thin sheet of mylared plastic or ferrotype stainless steel plate is nailed between the two plywood panels (with the shiny side facing into the parabolic focal point. You can see from the image that the sun's rays are made to focus directly on the focal point at which the barbeque skewer sits, thus creating the "hot spot" for cooking.

I have been collecting solar and alternate energy references and resources for the past 30 years. It started when I was in high school and got interested in other ways to create heat and light (mostly for during typhoons) when we lived on Guam.

I've recently discovered an interesting resource that you can see when you click here. Lots of ideas for ways you can build your own alternate energy sources for your home or small business.

And here are two more:

Solar Power Design Manual--Teach Yourself All About Solar Power. Comprehensive Manual by Genuine Expert. Spreadsheet Included.

Renewable Energy Solutions--The Manual--The folks who put this together have been presented on TV, Google, and the New York Times as a source of Alternate Energy Information. Good stuff for those in need of Alternate Energy!