By Vitaly V
Earth4Energy is a comprehensive guide to "going green" by creating your own wind turbines and solar panels, and powering your home with it. It can help you not only save thousands of dollars (professional wind turbine/ solar panel installations can cost literally thousands of dollars), but can also dramatically reduce your carbon footprint. In this article, we'll look at the Earth4Energy eBook and tell you if it is truly worth spending any money on.
Earth4Energy easily provides the most value for money in terms of its in-depth content. While other books on this topic suffer from a lack of adequate information, Earth4Energy gives you all the knowledge you'll ever need to create your very own wind turbines and solar panels. Considering that is priced lower than other books in this niche, this is tremendous value for money.
One thing to look for when buying anything online is the customer service. In a DIY project, you will invariably become stuck and will require some sort of guidance. Fortunately, Earth4Energy has great customer service that is quick to answer any queries or doubts you might have.
The actual content of the guidebook is full of detailed, step-by-step instructions. Many DIY books suffer from information overload and cram their pages with useless technical details of no use to the reader. Earth4Energy, however, avoids this mistake by presenting information in an easy to digest, easy to follow manner that even a complete beginner can understand easily.
Not only that, the data presented within the eBook is highly accurate, and the plans for building your own solar panels are as detailed as any you will find.
In short, you can't really go wrong with this eBook if you really care about the environment (and your electricity bill!). You'll find it full of practical information, free from useless jargon, and replete with easy to follow instructions you can put to use starting today!
To read opinion of consumers and review visit Earth4Energy review page. Earth4Energy eBook review.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Vitaly_V
http://EzineArticles.com/?Earth4Energy-Review---Going-Green-Just-Got-a-Whole-Lot-Easier&id=3790921
Thursday, February 25, 2010
Friday, February 19, 2010
Building the solar way
Energy crisis is inevitable; so the best we can do is learn to live with it. Instead of crying over spilt milk, we need to focus on ways and means to solve the problem. While loudly deploring the depletion of non-renewable fuels and the associated carbon pollution and climate change issues, we tend to forget the huge red ball overhead that radiates vast amounts of light and energy for free.
Surely, all that surplus sunlight and heat can work to our advantage. It is true that solar photovoltaic (PV) panels, water heaters, cells, etc. have found their way into many homes all over the planet. But what about entire buildings that have solar energy-harnessing components integrated into their designs?
Orientation toward sunlight was a major factor considered by ancient architects when they designed their cities and buildings. In the recent past, ‘solar buildings’ were discussed fervently and dropped by a majority as good to dream about but difficult to achieve in reality. Many considered the idea too impractical, too complicated and too expensive. Moreover, there was the fear your home would look like something out of a Star Wars movie what with all the extra fittings required to make it a solar home. However, experience proved all such misunderstandings wrong.
The principles behind solar buildings have been derived from both climatology and thermodynamics (heat transfer, in particular). In any building, heat transfer occurs by conduction, convection and radiation through roofs, walls, windows, and floors.
Passive solar buildings make use of design factors like the sun path (unique for any given latitude), sun spaces, thermal mass (which regulates interior temperatures), insulating envelope (associated with a foundation’s ability to store heat), etc. to effect beneficial changes in the heat transfer pattern to promote human thermal comfort. The inside of such buildings remain at a specified (nearly) constant temperature throughout the year irrespective of climate changes, that too with zero dependence on fuels.
Any solar design owes a major portion of its success to the proper orientation of the building toward sunlight. Many solar homes have solar panels lining the roofs and thermosiphon solar-heated water for domestic uses, which negates electricity and fuel bills. Add rain gardens, trees and shrubs to the picture and you get a cozy home complete with picturesque picnic spots.
The re-roofing of a barn in Albion, CA, attracted the attention of many a planet lover recently. A south-facing leaky metal roof was replaced by a PV panel roof that converted the barn into a power generator for the owner’s homestead located a few miles away.
There are figures to prove that for the same square feet, solar homes are less expensive to construct and maintain than conventional homes with small or no compromise on building aesthetics. They have also proven their ability to withstand harsher climate changes. And think of what you will save on your energy bills in return for the nominal amounts you spent on solar component incorporation and installation.
Surely, all that surplus sunlight and heat can work to our advantage. It is true that solar photovoltaic (PV) panels, water heaters, cells, etc. have found their way into many homes all over the planet. But what about entire buildings that have solar energy-harnessing components integrated into their designs?
Orientation toward sunlight was a major factor considered by ancient architects when they designed their cities and buildings. In the recent past, ‘solar buildings’ were discussed fervently and dropped by a majority as good to dream about but difficult to achieve in reality. Many considered the idea too impractical, too complicated and too expensive. Moreover, there was the fear your home would look like something out of a Star Wars movie what with all the extra fittings required to make it a solar home. However, experience proved all such misunderstandings wrong.
The principles behind solar buildings have been derived from both climatology and thermodynamics (heat transfer, in particular). In any building, heat transfer occurs by conduction, convection and radiation through roofs, walls, windows, and floors.
Passive solar buildings make use of design factors like the sun path (unique for any given latitude), sun spaces, thermal mass (which regulates interior temperatures), insulating envelope (associated with a foundation’s ability to store heat), etc. to effect beneficial changes in the heat transfer pattern to promote human thermal comfort. The inside of such buildings remain at a specified (nearly) constant temperature throughout the year irrespective of climate changes, that too with zero dependence on fuels.
Any solar design owes a major portion of its success to the proper orientation of the building toward sunlight. Many solar homes have solar panels lining the roofs and thermosiphon solar-heated water for domestic uses, which negates electricity and fuel bills. Add rain gardens, trees and shrubs to the picture and you get a cozy home complete with picturesque picnic spots.
The re-roofing of a barn in Albion, CA, attracted the attention of many a planet lover recently. A south-facing leaky metal roof was replaced by a PV panel roof that converted the barn into a power generator for the owner’s homestead located a few miles away.
There are figures to prove that for the same square feet, solar homes are less expensive to construct and maintain than conventional homes with small or no compromise on building aesthetics. They have also proven their ability to withstand harsher climate changes. And think of what you will save on your energy bills in return for the nominal amounts you spent on solar component incorporation and installation.
Monday, February 15, 2010
What’s (solar) cooking?
With electricity and cooking gas bills skyrocketing, it is no longer only the industrial giants who look for viable renewable energy harnessing options. Many homeowners from remote corners of the world have installed solar photovoltaic panels, wind turbines, etc. to meet the electricity needs of their homes.
Another option is to replace cooking gas with other renewable energy sources like solar energy. In fact, solar cooking is now being widely considered by many households because it is the safest, most convenient and by far the least expensive way of cooking. Another attractive feature is that solar cookers can be made at home with as little expense as under $10, using mainly cardboard, aluminum foil and glass. All it takes is a little perseverance to show your love for the planet.
To make a solar cooker, you need two cardboard boxes: one rectangular and the other square-shaped (your local grocery store can provide both). The larger one forms the oven box; the smaller one (smaller by 2 – 3 inches in all directions) is the inner box, which determines the cooking power and area of the cooker.
An inner box of dimensions 120 X 160 (length X breadth) square inches and a depth of 9 – 12 inches would be enough for a medium-sized cooker. To serve as collectors, you must get four flat pieces of regular cardboard (about 2 X 4 feet). Place the inner box inside the oven box with the mouth of the inner 1 inch below that of the outer. The space between the boxes must be tightly wedged with cardboard pieces to keep the heat in.
Cut out the four collectors, and aluminum foil is spread over them and secured with white glue. Glass is placed over the inner box with enough space below to put a finger underneath so as to slide it in or out. The inside of the cooker must be painted black to keep in maximum heat. To hold food, a dark baking tin is used.
For the oven to cook food, it must be kept facing the sun. The shadows created by the oven can be checked (don’t look directly at the sun) for making east-west adjustments. Food can be boiled or steamed in jars; if you paint them black, cooking time can be substantially reduced. It is also possible to cook more than one jar at a time. After cooking, the collectors are folded down over the glass to keep the food hot. Grains, vegetables, bread, pizza, fries all taste better when cooked in broad sunlight. The more adventurous can even try cooking cinnamon rolls, cake, corn, etc.
The upside of the global warming phenomenon is more sun to all parts of the world, i.e., more sunlight and more warmth to places that hitherto had only fewer daylight hours. Bingo! More sun means more energy – only if we know how to harness it. Talk about making the snake that bit you take out the venom.
Another option is to replace cooking gas with other renewable energy sources like solar energy. In fact, solar cooking is now being widely considered by many households because it is the safest, most convenient and by far the least expensive way of cooking. Another attractive feature is that solar cookers can be made at home with as little expense as under $10, using mainly cardboard, aluminum foil and glass. All it takes is a little perseverance to show your love for the planet.
To make a solar cooker, you need two cardboard boxes: one rectangular and the other square-shaped (your local grocery store can provide both). The larger one forms the oven box; the smaller one (smaller by 2 – 3 inches in all directions) is the inner box, which determines the cooking power and area of the cooker.
An inner box of dimensions 120 X 160 (length X breadth) square inches and a depth of 9 – 12 inches would be enough for a medium-sized cooker. To serve as collectors, you must get four flat pieces of regular cardboard (about 2 X 4 feet). Place the inner box inside the oven box with the mouth of the inner 1 inch below that of the outer. The space between the boxes must be tightly wedged with cardboard pieces to keep the heat in.
Cut out the four collectors, and aluminum foil is spread over them and secured with white glue. Glass is placed over the inner box with enough space below to put a finger underneath so as to slide it in or out. The inside of the cooker must be painted black to keep in maximum heat. To hold food, a dark baking tin is used.
For the oven to cook food, it must be kept facing the sun. The shadows created by the oven can be checked (don’t look directly at the sun) for making east-west adjustments. Food can be boiled or steamed in jars; if you paint them black, cooking time can be substantially reduced. It is also possible to cook more than one jar at a time. After cooking, the collectors are folded down over the glass to keep the food hot. Grains, vegetables, bread, pizza, fries all taste better when cooked in broad sunlight. The more adventurous can even try cooking cinnamon rolls, cake, corn, etc.
The upside of the global warming phenomenon is more sun to all parts of the world, i.e., more sunlight and more warmth to places that hitherto had only fewer daylight hours. Bingo! More sun means more energy – only if we know how to harness it. Talk about making the snake that bit you take out the venom.
Saturday, February 6, 2010
A Quick Review of Earth 4 Energy E-book - DIY Home Renewable Energy Guide
By Kevin Dine
If you're an enthusiast who wants to learn how to build a solar panel, then Earth4Energy is one of the home study courses that you should give a closer look.
It is undeniable that a solar panel can bring an improvement and benefit to your lifestyle and your home. If you're doing it in the right way, you can reduce your monthly power bills by half and save money.
Earth4Energy is written by Michael Harvey who has 15 years experience in the home renewable energy field. In this guide, he will guide you through step-by-step from the basic to the end of the project. You are not going to miss anything if you are paying attention and read through the guide.
The content itself is pretty much easy to read and understand as it is written in simple English format. To make the whole reading progress more enjoyable and interesting, the author of this e-book also inserted a lot of photo illustrations in the very same book.
Once you're done with the reading, you might want take a look at the video tutorials. Everything that done in the videos are extremely inspiring and intriguing and you might get fire up and get started as soon as possible once you done watching through it.
Building a solar panel under $200 is the main premise or attraction of this guide. However, since you're totally beginner in this field, it is alright and recommended for you to start your budget with more than $200. It would be easier to follow and less time consuming. As for the required parts, Earth4Energy will give a list and reference list that will show you where and how to get those parts with affordable price.
Earth4Energy does not only limit to one home energy system. If you want to generate optimal renewable home energy, you can learn to build and install a wind turbine at your home from Earth4Energy. It also covers the wind energy option in detail.
Contrary to common belief, building a solar panel is not ridiculously hard and impossible for non-technical person. If you can read, follow the instructions and are willingly to get your hands dirty, then it is not a problem for you. Getting a good reliable home study course is the most important step you need to do. Click HERE to read more reviews about home study courses and find the one which suit you the most.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kevin_Dine
http://EzineArticles.com/?A-Quick-Review-of-Earth-4-Energy-E-book---DIY-Home-Renewable-Energy-Guide&id=3698932
If you're an enthusiast who wants to learn how to build a solar panel, then Earth4Energy is one of the home study courses that you should give a closer look.
It is undeniable that a solar panel can bring an improvement and benefit to your lifestyle and your home. If you're doing it in the right way, you can reduce your monthly power bills by half and save money.
Earth4Energy is written by Michael Harvey who has 15 years experience in the home renewable energy field. In this guide, he will guide you through step-by-step from the basic to the end of the project. You are not going to miss anything if you are paying attention and read through the guide.
The content itself is pretty much easy to read and understand as it is written in simple English format. To make the whole reading progress more enjoyable and interesting, the author of this e-book also inserted a lot of photo illustrations in the very same book.
Once you're done with the reading, you might want take a look at the video tutorials. Everything that done in the videos are extremely inspiring and intriguing and you might get fire up and get started as soon as possible once you done watching through it.
Building a solar panel under $200 is the main premise or attraction of this guide. However, since you're totally beginner in this field, it is alright and recommended for you to start your budget with more than $200. It would be easier to follow and less time consuming. As for the required parts, Earth4Energy will give a list and reference list that will show you where and how to get those parts with affordable price.
Earth4Energy does not only limit to one home energy system. If you want to generate optimal renewable home energy, you can learn to build and install a wind turbine at your home from Earth4Energy. It also covers the wind energy option in detail.
Contrary to common belief, building a solar panel is not ridiculously hard and impossible for non-technical person. If you can read, follow the instructions and are willingly to get your hands dirty, then it is not a problem for you. Getting a good reliable home study course is the most important step you need to do. Click HERE to read more reviews about home study courses and find the one which suit you the most.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kevin_Dine
http://EzineArticles.com/?A-Quick-Review-of-Earth-4-Energy-E-book---DIY-Home-Renewable-Energy-Guide&id=3698932
Friday, February 5, 2010
Solar Power For Transport
The discovery of petroleum in the 1920s set back the world by two hundred years!!!
It is not that petroleum was unknown before the 1920s. 4000 years ago, petroleum was used in the Euphrates delta for lighting. It was mined from pitch springs in ancient Babylon, and from the river sand of Issus, a tributary of Euphrates. But with the arrival of cars, and the internal combustion engine, petroleum began to be widely used as a source of dense, high energy fuel.
If history had moved in a slightly different direction, liquid fuel powered automation might never have taken place. If this were a game of chance, like online sports betting, people would surely have said, at least in the late 1800s, that solar energy, not petrol, would be the dominant form of energy, and would probably be used to power the new-fangled Ford motors that were trying to replace the horse drawn buggy.
Starting from the 1870s, solar energy began to be used for water heating in American homes. In the southern United States, where the summer months had very strong sunlight, an enormous number of solar water heating units were sold. By the late 1890s, over 40% of houses in Pasadena, a Los Angeles suburb, had a contraption on the roof which was used to heat water. The technology spread to Texas, Arizona, Florida, and other sunny belts of the USA.
So, when the first automobiles rolled out of the Detroit factories, it was quite natural to think of a solar solution to their power supply. The jump from solar heating to solar powered cars was not much of a stride, but the discovery of petroleum as the fuel for cars set us back by 200 years. That’s the time span, we think, that it will take for us to produce the first workable solar powered car that can be comparable to a gas-powered sports car from Ferrari. Much like online sports betting, nature seemed to have played the wrong card and lost a crucial bet.
The two central problems with using solar power for vehicular fuels are concentration and storage. The sun hits the earth with about 174 petawatts of energy, 70% of which can potentially be harnessed for power. But that energy is spread out over a large surface area (the earth’s), and to use it needs something very crucial – space – which we don’t have, not on top of a vehicle. In fact, this lack of concentration makes solar power a very inefficient energy resource.
The other way to go is stored energy in the form of heat. Chemical storage of energy (batteries) is, in fact, a very inefficient way of storing energy. A thermos flask stores as much energy as a laptop’s battery, but costs 30 times less. A number of companies are now trying to develop thermal storage units that could be used to effectively store solar energy and use the stored energy to fuel cars, among other things.
It is not that petroleum was unknown before the 1920s. 4000 years ago, petroleum was used in the Euphrates delta for lighting. It was mined from pitch springs in ancient Babylon, and from the river sand of Issus, a tributary of Euphrates. But with the arrival of cars, and the internal combustion engine, petroleum began to be widely used as a source of dense, high energy fuel.
If history had moved in a slightly different direction, liquid fuel powered automation might never have taken place. If this were a game of chance, like online sports betting, people would surely have said, at least in the late 1800s, that solar energy, not petrol, would be the dominant form of energy, and would probably be used to power the new-fangled Ford motors that were trying to replace the horse drawn buggy.
Starting from the 1870s, solar energy began to be used for water heating in American homes. In the southern United States, where the summer months had very strong sunlight, an enormous number of solar water heating units were sold. By the late 1890s, over 40% of houses in Pasadena, a Los Angeles suburb, had a contraption on the roof which was used to heat water. The technology spread to Texas, Arizona, Florida, and other sunny belts of the USA.
So, when the first automobiles rolled out of the Detroit factories, it was quite natural to think of a solar solution to their power supply. The jump from solar heating to solar powered cars was not much of a stride, but the discovery of petroleum as the fuel for cars set us back by 200 years. That’s the time span, we think, that it will take for us to produce the first workable solar powered car that can be comparable to a gas-powered sports car from Ferrari. Much like online sports betting, nature seemed to have played the wrong card and lost a crucial bet.
The two central problems with using solar power for vehicular fuels are concentration and storage. The sun hits the earth with about 174 petawatts of energy, 70% of which can potentially be harnessed for power. But that energy is spread out over a large surface area (the earth’s), and to use it needs something very crucial – space – which we don’t have, not on top of a vehicle. In fact, this lack of concentration makes solar power a very inefficient energy resource.
The other way to go is stored energy in the form of heat. Chemical storage of energy (batteries) is, in fact, a very inefficient way of storing energy. A thermos flask stores as much energy as a laptop’s battery, but costs 30 times less. A number of companies are now trying to develop thermal storage units that could be used to effectively store solar energy and use the stored energy to fuel cars, among other things.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
