Greetings to all you energy conscious, eco-minded folks! I hope you are ready to read about solar energy and green building! I’d like to start with a little background, though, so you can see:

• Solar has been around for a long time.
• Energy efficiency is not trendy.
• I’m a credible source.

Solar energy is not new. It has been around for as long as the sun! Did you ever notice that the cliff dwellings of indigenous peoples, such as the Anasazi, face south?

Over a thousand years ago, people understood the power of the sun. They built their dwellings facing south to capture the sun’s winter warmth. The rocks absorbed the heat and released it slowly after dark. Cliff dwellings were also built under overhangs to shade out the high summer sun.

The principles of solar energy have not changed in thousands of years, and we use them in building today. As energy prices remain unstable, passive solar and other energy efficient building methods are becoming more important. Many communities, such as Taos, New Mexico, where I live, are putting energy efficient requirements into their building codes.

We must incorporate more renewable energy, because fossil fuels are finite. They will not be here forever to heat and cool our homes, and as they get depleted, prices will rise. We cannot create more oil, natural gas and coal, but the sun, wind and water will always be available. Fossil fuels also cause political struggle, greed and other negative energies. No one needs to die in the battle for fossil fuels when the sun, wind and water can supply our energy needs.

Your home is the first place to begin saving energy. According to the EPA, buildings in the US account for:

• 39 percent of total energy use
• 12 percent of the total water consumption
• 68 percent of total electricity consumption
• 38 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions

It is clear that saving energy in your home will have a positive impact on the planet and your wallet. An energy-efficient home is also a buffer against fuel price increases.

Energy efficient homes are my passion. I have wanted to be an architect since I was about six years old. I played with Legos more often than Barbie dolls. My passion for homes, solar energy and all things eco drove me to become an EcoBroker®, a Realtor® specializing in green homes.

I’ve been attracted to the sun since my Lego days, too. Maybe I was an Anasazi in a previous life. Or maybe the large sunny window in my childhood room had an effect on me. My mom turned my room into a greenhouse after I grew up and moved out. Whenever I came home, I slept with geraniums and orchids without complaint.

I was always outdoors, too, running in the woods, catching frogs in the brook, or marveling at pansy faces and the multicolor sheen of Japanese beetles. I knew at a young age I was part of the natural world. At 25, I got a grounds-keeping job at a large summer resort. I was in my element, working with plants and being outside every day. This was my first experience with a greenhouse, though.

The Wentworth by the Sea in Newcastle, NH had a greenhouse where we started from seed all the plants for the hundreds of lavish flower gardens. We mixed our own potting soils, transplanted seedlings into the ground, mulched, weeded, watered, fertilized, cleaned up in fall and spread composted manure on the beds in November. After eight heavenly months at the Wentworth, I wanted to study horticulture. I enrolled at the University of New Hampshire’s Thompson School of Applied Science for the fall of 1980.

There my solar studies began.

Anasazi photo from Shutterstock

Previously published at Green Buy Guide

Post from: The Good Human

Solar Energy Is Not New.

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Each heater is basically a sealed wooden box sitting on a small cement foundation and attached to the side of my house. The front of the box is made of glass windows and right behind the windows is black tar paper, which helps to attract and absorb the heat from the sun. Behind the tar paper and running back and forth several times within the box itself is 36 feet of dryer venting, zig-zagging itself back and forth from one end to the other.

Each end of this venting goes into my house – one entrance at one of the wooden box and one at the other. (Yes, 2 small holes are cut into my house for each end of the venting to be brought inside)

Inside my home, this venting is covered with a grate and framed out with some wood that matches the trim in the house. This is a closed loop system, where the air comes from inside my house, through the heater, and back into my house through the other vent. One end has a small fan with a thermostat attached, so that once the air inside the box reaches 72 degrees, the fan automatically turns on and pulls room-temperature air into the heater, lets it work its way through the 36 feet of “heated-up” venting, and returns it slowly back into the house.

When it is sunny outside, these heaters crank out some serious hot air. So even on frigid cold days, when these heaters come on they do a great job of heating up the place, as they aren’t even using the outside air to begin with. There is one on each end of my home, and because of the open floor plan, the heat comes from these ends and meets in the middle – my living room. Sure, they don’t work at night (obviously), but they definitely put out a lot of heat during the day, so the warmth does last into the evening for a bit (especially with my concrete floors).While you still may need to run your heater at night or on cloudy days, you won’t need to during any sunny days. A few of these will keep you toasty warm on the coldest of them.

Here is the materials list in case you want to try to build your own:

- Wood frame box
- Old windows
- Tar paper
- Cement for a footing
- Foam for around the footing
- Dryer venting
- Metal grates for inside the house
- Some wood trim (if you want it) for inside the house
- A small computer fan to pull the air into the heater
- A thermostat to have the fan turn on and off automatically

I know the boxes did take my landlord some time to build, but I also know they weren’t that expensive – especially for how much they give back. Just thought I would pass this amazing idea along to you guys!

Post from: The Good Human

Heat Your Home For Free With These Solar Heaters.

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Dear EarthTalk: I’d like to know the relative electricity cost of utility scale solar and wind plants versus rooftop residential solar. In other words, how can I know whether to subsidize my utility’s alternative energy plant or renovate my own home?

Making such a determination is complex, but you could start with “In My Backyard,” a new online tool by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). You first need to know your electricity usage and what size solar photovoltaic (PV) system or wind turbine you could install. Then, using Google Earth maps and data on the amounts of sunshine and wind at your location, the tool will estimate the electricity you could get from a certain size wind turbine or PV array installed on your property.

The costs to install renewable energy systems vary greatly by location, warn researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which is supported by the Department of Energy (DOE). And kilowatt hour (kWh) costs vary by utility, as do state and local financial incentives. One piece of good news: The federal Investment Tax Credit was expanded and extended this year. It allows for 30 percent of the cost of your system to be deducted from your federal tax bill, and is good through 2016.

Comparing the cost of going it alone to that of simply buying green power through your utility is not a simple equation, either. You can support your utility’s renewable power infrastructure by paying a premium on your electric bill, or you can buy renewable energy certificates—also known as green tags—even if your utility does not offer green power (green tags inject renewable energies into the grid even if they don’t come back to you via your own utility). To decide which equation is better for you, compare the costs of those programs over the same time period with the cost of building and maintaining your own system (minus any installation credits and/or revenues from selling your excess electricity back to the utility). That would give you the relative costs and return-on-investment.

But that’s still not the whole picture: Another question is whether your home system can continue to produce energy more cost-effectively than your utility, as it brings more and more green energy sources into its mix. Lawrence Berkeley says no, essentially. A February 2009 report summarizing the costs of PV from 1998 to 2007 concluded that larger systems averaged a 25 percent lower cost than the smallest ones.

The same is true for wind power, says the American Wind Energy Association. The group’s February 2005 report calculates that a large wind farm can deliver electricity at a nearly 40 percent lower cost than a small one. It also can take advantage of economies of scale in lower operational and maintenance costs.

The bottom line is this: Decades ago, when widespread use of alternative energy was still only a dream, building one’s own private source of home power was the only way to get off the carbon-intense grid and ensure that your own energy needs left little footprint. But today, with considerably more renewable energy sources coming online or about to do so in quantum leap measures—and at much greater efficiencies than can be achieved privately—the best bet may well be to forego the go-it alone path and support your utility’s efforts to generate green power not just for your own household but for everyone.

CONTACTS: NREL’s “In My Backyard” Tool, www.nrel.gov/eis/imby; DOE Green Power Network, http://apps3.eere.energy.gov/greenpower.

SEND YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTIONS TO: EarthTalk, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; earthtalk@emagazine.com. Read past columns at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalk/archives.php. EarthTalk is now a book! Details and order information at: www.emagazine.com/earthtalkbook.

Post from: The Good Human

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