Solar Power Solutions for Your Home

Energy crisis, peak oil – is it any wonder that more and more people are checking out the benefits of renewable energy and specifically solar power? Solar power is environmentally friendly and easy to use.

Solar power solutions for your home have so far been seen as too costly and difficult to install. People would be surprised how relatively inexpensive and easy it can be today to install solar power at your home. By installing solar power solutions at your home, you can drastically reduce your electricity bills and contribute to the next generation being left with a green and functioning environment.

In this article, we will look at three different solar solutions for home use:

Solar Oven/Cooker: One of the easiest ways to use solar energy is cooking with a solar cooker or solar oven. There are different devices available, like panel cookers, parabolic cookers or box cookers. These cookers are based on the principle of concentrating the sun’s energy into one area, using mirrors or other reflective material, which generates enough heat to cook and bake.

Solar Power for Heating: The solar collector, a dark painted box with a glass cover through which pipes are fed, is the main component of a solar heating system. Filled with anti-freeze, the fluid in these pipes is heated by the sun’s rays. The heat exchange is happening in the hot water storage tank, where the pipes from the solar collector are threaded through. Both, the pipes from the solar collector and the hot water storage tank are separate closed systems, so that the working fluid does not contaminate the hot water.
There are active systems, where the fluid is moved by pump and passive systems, where the fluid moves by natural convection.
You can use the generated hot water for different purposes, like running hot water for kitchen or bath, for house heating or even heating the pool, if you have one.

Solar Power Generation: The light rays of the sun can be turned into electric current by using certain materials, which is called a photovoltaic effect (PV). A young French scientist by the name of Becquerel was the first to identify this effect. Later in 1923, Albert Einstein was awarded the Nobel Prize for his theories describing the photoelectric effect, which is the basis for the photovoltaic processes.
It was not until the sixties and seventies of the 20th century that the PV technology was made more reliable and also cheaper by the space industry using this technology in their space craft.

By connecting many individual solar cells you can form a photovoltaic module and the size of it and the amount and intensity of the solar rays determine the voltage and current you can generate.

You must utilize solar energy when it is available or store it for later or continued use, as it is not available at night or on overcast days. Rechargable batteries have to be used to store the surplus solar power generated electricity.

Today, solar cells have become very efficient and are readily available.

Even a not so experienced home-handyman can now create his own do it yourself solar power system, saving a lot of money. At the same time you can show your neighbors how environmentally responsible you are and that you contribute to solving our energy crisis.

If you want to find out more about how to create your own Solar Power at home, then go to 24/7 Free Power’s: Solar Power Solutions at Home