Habitat for Health | Resources

Home solar power is an excellent way to both save money on power and lower your carbon footprint that is left on the earth. Solar energy is produced using photovoltaic cells.

Solar cells have been available for many years and are a way of producing electricity on site. Many persons that use solar energy may have no other source of electricity, while others are still connected to the normal power supply, but use their solar power to reduce the cost that they spend on electricity. Still others use solar electricity with some other form of power that is produced on site. They may choose to use a generator that is powered by fossil fuels or a wind turbine to produce supplemental energy as needed.

If you are going to be totally dependent on solar energy, then you will need to plan for the nights when the sun is not shining. Many solar energy users will also have a large bank of batteries that can be used to store the electricity that is generated by the sun during the day. This will give them the necessary energy to operate lights and appliances after dark or on overcast days when the sun is not producing electricity through their solar cells.

While solar energy is useful for many things, there are some places there is not enough power produced for the use. Heating and air conditioning are two of these areas. For heating you may want to consider active or passive solar heating of the home. This makes use of the public power supply nice for the additional energy.

In addition, some users that have a small acreage, plant black locust trees for a self perpetuating wood lot. These trees, once cut will reproduce in a few years from the root stock and the home will never run out of potential firewood.

In the summer, cooling can also be a problem. This is especially true where humidity is high. Some persons use cooling from the basement or an underground cooling tube that can be blown through the duct work in the home to provide cooling.

In addition, there has been some recent work on solar heat pumps and air conditioning units. Currently these units require a large initial outlay and are not large enough to cool an entire home. If these units are perfected and the prices drop, then home solar power may become an even more popular choice among homeowners.