By Steven Michaels

Solar energy is the wave of the future in energy procurement: solar is free, easy to obtain, and provides more than enough energy for most typical households. For these very reasons, building your own cheap solar panels is a great way to reduce utility costs and “Go Green” at the same time!

Why Go Solar?

Solar panels, also known as photovoltaic cells capture the energy from sunlight and store it in a battery bank. You then run your appliances and other electrical items from the battery bank. In essence, this completely erases the carbon footprint of your home for electricity costs. Solar energy is renewable, easy to obtain, and very cheap to capture once your system is set up. Building cheap solar panels is a great way to further reduce the cost of implementing a solar system. Initial installation for pre-manufactured solar power systems ranges from $10,000-16,000 per home and can be quite expensive. Building your own cheap solar panels from readily available materials not only helps you capitalize on a renewable energy source, but also cuts down even further on your impact on the environment as your panels will not have required any manufacturing processes.

Its Easy!

Numerous kits are available for download from various vendors that teach you how to make cheap solar panels at home with materials commonly found in your local hardware store. The information that you will download contains instructions on calculating your actual electricity needs based on your current utility bills. Once you have that information, you can then begin building the cheap solar panels, each of which should take you about a day to construct. Once you have your battery bank and a few of the solar panels built, you can begin switching your power reliance away from the electric company a bit at a time until finally you are able to live completely “off-grid.” Most municipalities will require a site inspection to make sure your solar power system is up to code, but after that you should be free to use your new solar power home exclusively.

Save Money!

Your new solar power home will pay for itself many times over in the course of its useful life. Many utility companies will even allow a resident connection to the grid and can pull some of your excess energy units from the cheap solar panels you built, netting you a small energy credit or even a bit of a profit from your solar installation. The kit or download that you obtain to build the cheap solar panels will include instructions on not only construction, but on how best to capitalize on your solar investment. There are a variety of tax credits and cash incentives available to consumers who are now interested in building or retrofitting a solar power home, and the building kit or how to video on building a solar power home should explain how best to utilize these incentives.

Solar energy is a great alternative to paying a large utility conglomerate each month. Use the information readily available from a variety of sources to capture and utilize your own energy and make a difference for our planet today!

Steven Michaels is the webmaster at Cheap Solar Panels where you can learn about building solar power systems for the home.

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Wind power has long been a source of renewable energy, as evidenced by the many windmills of centuries past. The flow of air is used to run wind turbines, some of which can produce up to 5 megawatts of power. The most common wind turbines for renewable energy used commercially produce between 1.5 and 3 megawatts. The renewable energy that a wind turbine gives off is derived by the cube of the speed of the wind. As the speed of the wind increases the power that the turbine puts out increases almost exponentially. In places where wind is strong and nearly continual such as at high altitudes and offshore are the best places to locate wind farms.

Wind is the fastest growing source of power through any of the renewable energy resources and technologies. In the past ten years, the maximum capacity of wind power installed the world over went from a 1992 high of 2500 megawatts to a high of 40,000 in 2003 and continued to grow each year after that by another 30 percent. This shows no signs of abating. Due to wind being an intermittent energy resource most wind turbines in the European Union only produce an average of one fourth of the power they are actually capable of. Under favourable wind conditions, however, some reach 35 percent or more. In winter the EU realizes a higher load factor. What this means is that wind as a renewable energy in Europe typically has a capacity for 5 megawatts maximum per turbine but regularly produces 1.7 megawatts.

The long term potential for wind as a reliable renewable energy resource throughout the global is probably about five times what it currently produces and forty times what is currently demanded of it. Large pieces of land that are not now being used for wind turbines could easily do so, especially in high wind areas. The offshore areas, where wind is nearly twice as fast and dependable as that of inshore land masses could be increased substantially as renewable wind energy sources.

The strength of the wind near the surface of the earth varies considerably and scientists cannot assure that the earth would have continuous renewable wind energy there unless it was combined with other sources of energy or stored in some way. Some suggest that 1000 megawatts of the capacity for conventional wind gathering could be counted on to produce 333 megawatts of power that is continuous. This could change as our technology evolves, but most experts suggest using wind in the context of a renewable energy system that has an expansive capacity for reserving the energy. Examples of these would be hydro power, desalination plants, reserve loads and the mitigation of the economic impact of variability of resources.

Not only is wind power a renewable energy, but like other renewable energies it gives off no harmful greenhouse gases while being operated – no methane, no carbon dioxide. The one negative of wind power is that bats and birds get caught up in the turbines and get killed. Wind turbines should, therefore, be built where this impact would be least felt.

James Copper is a writer for http://www.plumbingcareer.co.uk

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