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Related: Solar EnergyOff Grid Solar Living: Lessons in Energy Efficiency This story is meant to provide information about off grid living, meant to teach you or inspire you. I get a lot of people that ask me ‘What’s it like to live off the grid?’ I think a lot of people picture us huddled around a candle in darkened cabin in the middle of the woods.
Residential Renovation of a Schoolhouse Search The Renewable Energy site for Do-It-Yourselfers This is the most carefully thought out and carefully executed energy retrofit I have seen. Gordon and Sue took a drafty 1963 brick schoolhouse with almost no insulation and converted into a home that could meet Passive House Institute standards, and that has a heating bill that is 6% of a similar size code built home in their area. Building a new home with a thermal envelope this efficient would be an excellent accomplishment -- doing this in a retrofit situation with all the challenges that go with trying to bend an existing structure to your needs makes it much more difficult.
How I built an electricity producing Solar Panel Several years ago I bought some remote property in Arizona. I am an astronomer and wanted a place to practice my hobby far away from the sky-wrecking light pollution found near cities of any real size. In my attempt to escape city slicker yuppies (you know the kind, the ones that like to blab loudly on their cell phone while they work on some business administration degree in a cyber cafe somewhere in Trendyland.) and their light pollution, I found a great piece of remote property. The problem is, it's so remote that there is no electric service available.
New Catalyst Lets Us Store the Power of the Sun In Brief Scientists have found a way to “crack” water three times more efficiently using solar- and wind-generated electricity, which means it’s possible to store renewable energy for later use. Rainy Day Energy One of the problems with using renewable energy sources is that you’re overly dependent on the fickle whims of weather. The $1000 Solar Water Heating System Search The Renewable Energy site for Do-It-Yourselfers Directory -- for the system overview provided on this page: South African team may have solved solar puzzle even Google couldn't crack It is a problem that has so far stumped even Google’s brainy engineers – how to generate cheap solar electricity using a small-scale array of mirrors to concentrate the sun’s energy. Now a team at a South African university – led by a former Intel strategic planner – believes they have cracked it. Once they have completed a prototype system in October they have big plans for rolling out the technology.
Passive Solar Home Design FAQ Q: What is passive solar design? Passive solar design uses sunshine to heat and light homes and other buildings without mechanical or electrical devices. It is usually part of the design of the building itself, using certain materials and placement of windows or skylights. A successful passive solar building needs to be very well insulated in order to make best use of the sun's energy. The result is a quiet and comfortable space, free of drafts and cold spots. Passive solar design can also achieve summer cooling and ventilating by making use of convective air currents which are created by the natural tendency of hot air to rise.
7th Grader mimics Nature 13 year old copies Nature to Improve Solar Performance Thirteen year old Aidan Dwyer was walking in the woods in Upstate New York in the winter and noticed a spiral pattern to tree branches. Aidan realized the tree branches and leaves had a mathematical spiral pattern that could be shown as a fraction. About - Emily Cummins When I was four, my Grandad gave me a hammer and began to teach me how to make toys from scraps of materials found in his garden shed. I loved the fact that we could make something out of seemingly random bits, and my interest in sustainable design was born. As I got older I learnt about the properties of different materials and became more experienced in using a range of tools. Now I'm 27 and my latest innovation is a sustainable fridge which is 'powered' by dirty water but keeps medicines or small food items clean, dry and cool. I refined my fridge during a gap year in Namibia and then decided to give away the design plans in townships across southern Africa because I wanted to enable as many people as possible to build their own fridges.
Cristian's Earth Sheltered Passive Solar Home in Romania Search The Renewable Energy site for Do-It-Yourselfers NEW: Cristian adds a greenhouse... And now the story... The Solar Conundrum The Solar Conundrum: heat decreases the production of electrical energy in PV. Hybrid Vacuum Tubes.By efficiently drawing heat away from the solar panel for space heating, hot water, de-salination and cooling the photovoltaic cells are maintained at an optimum operating temperature. This results in significantly higher electrical output than standard photovoltaic panels. A Simple Design Methodology For Passive Solar Houses Designing a Passive Solar House When the term, "passive solar" was introduced into the language of professional solar researchers in the 1970's, most people didn't have a vague notion what it meant. Later, as the term was popularized by the media and through a large number of public educational conferences, people probably thought that if they wanted to build a passive solar house they would have to hire not only an architect, but a professional solar engineer capable of manipulating very complex mathematical equations on a computer. Today, thanks primarily to knowledge gained from government-funded research on a large number of completed "pioneer" passive solar houses, we've collected data in the late 1970s, and are at the stage where even a high school student can design a passive solar structure.
Welcome to The Sietch - Projects Build Your Own Solar Thermal Panel After our first attempt at a home built proof of concept solar thermal panel, we were a bit disappointed with the results. It took about 4 hours before the thing started work, and was a bit costly (at over 50 dollars) to make. I knew it could be done better and cheaper. My first mistake with the first one was purchasing everything new.