Renewable Solar Power

If you know that you're ready to take advantage of solar power, and possibly even wind energy also, don't make it an expensive, stressful situation. The power itself is free, don't make the devices used to convert that energy a deal breaker.

For less than $200 you can get started living the life so many others are realizing. By building just a solar panel, or wind turbine, every month or two, you can eventually get to the point where you have no electric bill!!

If you're ready to start now, head over to Renewable Solar and Wind Energy, and start living the dream.

According to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), US wind producers enjoyed another record year of growth in 2008-the third in a row. The country now has an installed wind power capacity well in excess of 21,000 megawatts (MW), enough to supply electricity to over 5.5 million American homes.

According to Randall Swisher, AWEA Executive Director, "Wind energy installations are well ahead of the curve for contributing 20% of the U.S. electric power supply by 2030 as envisioned by the U.S. Department of Energy."

What's so hard to understand for many, this writer included, is that the United States can accomplish this when operating under an administration that has been described as some as being 'indifferent' to the plight of the renewable energy industry. Just imagine if we could become focused and really put forth the effort that we should be.



Why, why, can't those that are in the positions to make a big difference, see what we need to be doing, and compound our efforts about four fold ?

We're not going to reverse global warming overnight, we're not going to end our dependence on oil, foreign or domestic anytime soon, but we need to work as hard and fast as we can to achieve those goals.

Now is not the time to be patting ourselves on the back for doing an 'OK' job.

We Can All Do Our Parts to Help

Please conserve when and where you can. When so much of our energy is just totally wasted...possibly as much as 20-30% of what private residences consumes... by some estimates, it's a almost a sin not to make a dramatic change...and we need to start today!

Solar and Wind Power is, I believe an answer from God (Mother Nature ?). What other forms of energy are just handed to use to use ? There's virtually nothing that is 'bad' about these energy sources. There's no dirty, expensive coal or oil fired plants, no wars being fought for control of the resources.

I have to repeat this story because it's so hard to believe. A politician on television was talking about our dependence on foreign oil, and said we need to focus our efforts on clean, renewable alternatives, such as nuclear!!

Gimme a Break...nuclear produces waste, and lots of it, that has, as best as we can guess, a deadly, radioactive 'life' in the tens of thousands of years!!

I don't think that's one of our better options. Duh!

Let's Really Go Clean, and Cheap

Short of having to actually build the wind turbines and solar panels, which of course initially would be substantial, everything is virtually 100% clean and free from then on. The maintenance costs associated with these systems would be nearly non-existent compared to what we spend worldwide in cash and lives trying to keep the oil flowing.

I'm a man of average intelligence (at best), but it scares me when so many upper-level individuals in positions of power chooses to let things continue on because of political power and greed.

Solar energy is extremely low maintenance, and although when much of the wind turbine technology was being developed throughout the last couple of decades, there was a downtime of approximately 15%. That has now been lowered to 3% (or less).

The homebuilt options for solar and wind energy producing systems can be assumed to have the same general high reliability numbers.

The best way to save money on your utility bill is buy building your own solar panels, and/or wind turbines at home.

It's easy, and a wind turbine or solar panel can be built for under $200. That's a fraction of the cost of a commercially available option.

Go to Renewable Solar and Wind Energy to get all the information.

Did you know that you're probably paying at least $50 or more per month to operate your standard 'tank type water heater' ?

Because a hot water heater, by design, naturally goes through a continuous cycle of heating, losing some heat, reheating, on and on, a lot of the heat is wasted.

Much of the money that you're spending every month is going out the flue with the unused heat, it's called 'standby heat loss'.

You wouldn't leave your car running 24/7, why pay to heat water if you're not using it at the time ?

The bad thing is, standby loss can be up to 15-20% of the energy bill!!

The answer is a tankless water heater. Besides the fact of the energy efficiency, they take up less space, are easy to maintain, and are more convenient to operate.

Tankless water heaters are 80-99% energy efficient.

Tank type water heaters are 40% to 60% energy efficient (the rest of the energy is spent to heat the exhaust and walls of the tank!).

Let's say that you care absolutly nothing about money (right!), so you don't care how much your utility bill is every month. Regardless of how much you pay, if you have a 40 gallon water heater you're limited to 40 gallons of hot water per hour...period.

With a tankless, or on-demand system, you'll never run out of hot water again. It's heated immediately, as it's needed.

With a tankless heater, you'll save enough to pay for the heater and installation in a relatively short period, and then you're actually earning money every month from having it.

Why would anyone even consider owning a standard tank heater again ?

Ready to start building your own solar panels ?

Please go to Renewable Solar and Wind Energy to get all the information to build your own solar panels and wind turbines at home.

Even if you don't have any special skills, you can build the solar panel and the wind turbine. The wind turbine does require more effort than a solar panel would. Also, if you decide to build a wind turbine, check to see what wind zone that you live in before you start the build.

If you live in a very low wind area, it probably wouldn't be worth building (or buying) a wind turbine. Building your own solar panels, on the other hand, are cost effective nearly every place that people inhabit. With the cost of construction so low, even if you just used a single panel to power a relatively low-power application, the initial investment could still be recovered, and then virtually free power could be enjoyed thereafter.

Did You Know ?

If all the light bulbs in exit signs in buildings in the United States were replaced with highly efficient LEDs, that 5 power plants could be taken offline ?

If just half the homes in the Unites States changed over to solar water heating, 20 power plants good be taken offline ?

A family owned dairy farm, that installed a methane gas system, that utilizes waste from the cattle to generate Methane gas, was able to generate enough fuel to operate their generators, allowing them to eliminate their monthly utility bill of from $800 dollars-$1,200. Enough to supply energy for 5 single family homes ?

Many families could save over half of what they spend on their monthly utility bills if they practiced good conservation techniques ?

I guess it kind of goes without saying that I'm pretty big on clean energy, saving the planet, all the 'treehugger' stuff. I really don't go overboard on it though. I just know that we need to make changes, and make them soon if we want to have a planet for the generations yet to come.

Here's a concept that probably not a lot of people put much thought into. Most, or at least many of today's electrical, and electronic household appliances are using electricity even when they're 'off'.

You know you watched your VCR flash '12:00' for years like most people. I know to ask everyone to suddenly start unplugging most of these devices isn't going to happen, nor is it necessarily practical.

However, here's just a little figuring to hopefully help you to realize how much energy is wasted, in these devices when they're not actually being used.

The average U.S. household has about 40 to 60 W of continuous phantom loads running, day in and day out. On average, this amounts to approximately 1,200 WH per day (50 W x 24 hrs./day = 1,200 WH/day) or 1.2 kilowatt-hours (KWH) per day.

The same average U.S. home uses about 900 KWH of electricity per month, and 36 KWH per month, or about 4 percent of total electricity use, is due to standby losses. Multiply this figure by 122 million U.S. housing units, and enough energy is wasted by standby losses in the United States to run all of the homes on the continent of Australia, and then some!

These figures are the stuff that energy nightmares are made of. Don't cha think ?

Obviously we can't unplug every single appliance every time we're not actually using it, but, when you can turn something off, do it. If you're going on vacation, unplug the phantoms and save yourself some money.

I used to be a firm believer in leaving my computer on 24/7/365. I won't argue my point here, but I used to do field service for a computer company, and we had less hardware failures from the clients that left their machines on 24 hours a day. Now though I've made many changes in my household, and I save probably at least $40/month just from changes in my daily habits.

With the way things are today though, we all need to make some changes. We've all become such spoiled, wasteful beasts. If we could all just personally commit to making some reasonable changes everyday, it would go an extremely long way in making a difference in the global situation.

Solar power is a completely clean, renewable energy source that has zero emissions. There is no other power-generating technology that has less of an impact on the environment. Although wind power is also very clean, but physically requires more room and must be placed in a fairly high wind zone to make it cost effective.

Photo-voltaics also don't require liquid or gaseous fuels to be transported or combusted. And because its energy source - sunlight - is free and abundant, PV systems can guarantee access to electric power from virtually anywhere.

PV frees us from the cost and uncertainties surrounding energy supplies from politically volatile regions. And in addition to reducing our trade deficit, a robust domestic PV industry creates new jobs and strengthens the U.S. economy.

Water heating accounts for 13% of your utility bill, and is the third greatest energy use in a home.

There are a few ways however, to save some of the water heating expense: of course if you use less hot water it will help greatly, you can also insulate your water heater, or if it's an old one, buy a new high efficiency heater, and you can
turn down the thermostat on the water heater.

You should also insulate the first 6 feet of hot and cold pipes connected to the water heater.

You may want to consider getting an on-demand, or tankless water heater. These natural gas devices have been shown to decrease water heating expense by up to 30%.

Of course there are solar alternatives available for your hot water needs. These systems usually pay for themselves after 3-4 years, so from there on they're basically free to use until they need repair or replacement.

Have a look at Renewable Solar Energy here to see how you can start building your own solar powered generating system today.

You can start by just building 1 or 2 solar panels, and then add on as your finances will allow. It's very easy to generate the power that is slowly becoming very, very expensive.