| While all forms of renewable
energy are considered to be solar-derived, I'm only going to deal with
solar photovoltaic, solar water heating and building design. We can do
tidal another time. |
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Photovoltaic |
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| Photovoltaic arrays produce
direct current that is used to charge a bank of batteries. You could
choose to connect DC loads to the battery bank, such as lighting. Most
people will choose to use an inverter to convert DC to 115VAC household
current. When the batteries are fully charged, excess power can go back
to the grid, spinning your meter backwards. Check with your local
utility. |
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| You can buy a 5 megapixel camera
for $350 and a gig of RAM for $140. As more players get in to the
photovoltaic business and demand rises, the price of solar panels will
go down.
All new buildings should be
roofed in PV panels. Programs should be created to make it really easy
for homeowners, commercial and industrial building owners to deploy
solar technologies. These are investments that will pay off handsomely
in the future as well as employing fitters and installers and all the
others who will benefit from this industry. |
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Let's say you decide to have a house
built for you. Instead of building it the normal, code-compliant way,
you decide to soup up the house. People soup up cars and boats, so why
not soup up your house? Depending on where you live, you would take
different but similar steps to optimize the heating and cooling and
lighting performance of the building. If you put an additional $50,000
in the budget and used it to upgrade the building's insulation, better
windows, an efficient heat exchanger, solar hot water and solar
photovoltaic and a computer for the house, you would save much more of
your electricity and natural gas bill than the $316 you are now paying
the bank. The cost of the improvements is paid for with tax-deductible
mortgage payments. The net cost is going to be way less than the power
and gas bill, which is paid for with after-tax dollars. |
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You can even use the sun
to cool your building. Visit ->
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| Efficient building design
requires less energy to maintain comfortable living conditions and often
results in more interesting spaces. Consider ING. You may have seen the
goofy TV ads. I think most of them involved the 3 initials being blocked
by something. Maybe this suggests that ING is not the ending to
something, but the beginning. There is a wonderful description of this building in Natural Capitalism. I scanned it for your convenience.
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