While you are working on your solar panels or solar heaters, you can also explore other small projects that can make your house a better place to live in.

Here are some projects that take you less than a day to implement. And many of them are very helpful in lowering your energy bills as well.

Most of them do not cost more than $100+, so if you have a little time and a little cash, you can begin right away:

1. Install solar screens

Solar screens help to keep your house cool during summer. It prevents heat from coming into your house through the windows. As such, your air-conditioners will not need to work as hard.

Most solar screens are quite affordable. The best ones are those with a metallic, reflective surface. They reflect radiation away instead of absorbing it. They are also pretty durable.

2. Solar ventilators

Ventilators can be installed at your attic, powered by solar energy. During summer, you can activate these fans to pump the heat out of your interior. This alone can cool your house considerably.

All you need is a small fan, a small vent that comes with a cover and a small solar panel. You don’t even need rechargeable batteries. It stops working when it becomes dark, but you won’t need it at night.

Try it.

When the weather gets colder, remember to cover them properly so heat doesn’t escape through these vents.

3. Solar powered air circulation

When you heat up your house, warm air rises to the top. They are all trapped at the ceiling or attic. Heat is not distributed evenly. You can install a ceiling fan to push the heat down, or use solar power to pump warm air down to ground level.

The effect: Your home warms us faster and you’ll feel more comfortable.

For this project, you’ll need a small solar panel, a set of rechargeable batteries, a long pipe and a small exhaust fan.

4. Landscaping

Planting trees, scrubs and bushes around your house can give you many benefits. You will not only create a beautiful and rejuvenating environment… You can prevent bitter cold winds from blowing against your house in winter and shelter your house from strong sunshine during summer.

5. Install solar light tubes

Solar light tubes allow natural light to enter your house while keeping the heat and precipitation out. They cost a little more. But you can experience the benefits of full spectrum lighting in your room without expensive illumination technology.

Continue Reading:

1. 7 Different Ways of Using Solar Energy At Home and In Your Office
2. Challenges and Difficulties In Using Solar Panels And How To Overcome Them
3. Survey Your Household Energy Usage Before Installing Solar Panels

Make Your Home & Office Clean & Green Using Solar Energy

There are many different ways of using solar energy. You can use it for heating, cooling and for generating electricity.

Each approach has different costs and complexity.

Here are 7 ideas how you can make use of clean, green solar power:

1. Generate electricity.

This is the first thing on everyone’s mind when we talk about solar panel. After all, we are all hoping to rely less on fossil fuel in the future. Using electricity generated from solar panels, you can power your household appliances and workstations in the office.

You can also store the solar generated electricity in rechargeable batteries to power up garden lights, floodlights, gate openers, garage lights, et cetera.

2. Passive space heating.

Instead of using electricity to heat up your house, the sun can do the work. You can trap heat in your home and office by using blinds, sunrooms and awnings. As simple as this sounds, it works very well to lower your electricity consumption.

3. Heat up air and water.

Your water supply can be heated up using solar collectors. Solar water heater do not require many moving parts other than the water pump itself.

Depending on your solar heater design and sunlight intensity, water temperature can be increased by as much as 10 to 15 degree Celsius. You can also increase your indoor temperature by letting a stream of air pass through solar heated water. This can be done using a simple heat exchanger.

4. Warm up food.

Do you pack lunch to work? If you do, there is no need to wait for your turn to use the microwave oven anymore. You can simply use solar energy to heat up your food at your own convenience.

5. Heat up your swimming pool

You can circulate swimming pool water through a solar collector. This helps you get lots of heat into your pool so you can enjoy a rejuvenating dip after you come back from work.

Another way to heat up your pool is to cover it with a solar blanket, which also prevents heat loss through evaporation.

6. Enhance your landscaping

You can use super-bright LED lamps as landscape lighting. This can save you the trouble of hiding cables under the soil. You may be surprised at how well these LED lamps bring out the color of your plants at night.

7. Water your plants

Solar panels can provide electricity to sprinklers that water your plants. You can build a self-sustaining garden by collecting rainwater underground and using them to water the plants at regular intervals during the day.

How else can you use solar energy in your daily life? Hopefully these ideas above can help you find your own ways of using solar power in creative ways.

Continue Reading:

1. Home Solar Power — Different Ways of Harnessing Energy From The Sun To Reduce Energy Bills
2. Survey Your Household Energy Usage Before Installing Solar Panels
3. Creating An Energy Efficient House – A Primer On Why You Should Do It and How

Solar panel inverters convert direct current (DC) into alternating current (AC). This is one of the most important components that you need for your solar power generator.

You can find three types of solar panel inverters:

1. Stand-Alone Solar Panel Inverters
2. Synchronous Solar Panel Inverters
3. Multi-function Solar Panel Inverters

1. Stand-Alone Solar Panel Inverters

Stand Alone solar panel inverters has a range from as little as 100 watts to as much as 8,000 watts. Low wattage inverters can be used to power individual or small groups of appliances. At the high end of the scale, solar inverters can help power an entire home. In order to know what inverter specification you should use, you will need to first determine the total energy consumed by your household.

This information is easily available from your monthly energy bills. To arrive at the specification you need, please take into account the power loss through various photovoltaic components. Even if there’s no loss (which is impossible), it’s good to have some buffer.

When using inverters to power household appliances, it’s important to choose models that have a built-in ability to surge. Common appliances like dryers and clothes washers and other motorized equipment require a surge when you start then up. Thus your inverter has to supply this need.

Click Here To Read About Synchronous Solar Panel Inverters

Continue Reading:

1. Sizing Your Solar Energy Panels – Part 2
2. Sizing Your Solar Energy Panels – Part 3
3. Solor Panel Inverters – Synchronous Solar Panel Inverters

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Solar panel kits are becoming more and more popular with DIY hobbyists in the past few years. This is perhaps due to increasing energy costs and a heightened awareness to preserve the environment for our posterity. With these kits, even an amateur can easily set up a photovoltaic panel at his home to power small electrical appliances.

While these panels will not supply the energy needs of your entire household, it certainly helps reduce your energy bills. There are 3 compelling reasons why you should be using solar panel kits:

1. Using Renewable Energy Preserves Our Environment

The use of fossil fuel causes tons of pollutants to be released into the atmosphere every day. Young children and elderly people are more susceptible than others. People with health problems such as asthma, heart and lung disease may also suffer more when the air is polluted.

Since the beginning of the industrial revolution and the development of the internal combustion engine, people have been breathing in carbon particles and other harmful gases everyday. But our environment can be made cleaner in our generation if more of us use renewable energy in our daily lives.

2. They Help Cut Your Energy Bills

Besides helping the environment, solar energy can supplement your household energy needs. This helps reduce your electricity bills. With enough solar panels running for you, the savings can be substantial – you may even cut your bills in half. For example, estimates show that with renewable energy sources, the average family in New Hampshire can save up to $171 in utility bills.

3. Energy Can Be Available Anywhere

It is expensive and resource draining to run power cables to remote places. Whether you are in the middle of a desert or on an abandoned island, you can still produce electricity for yourself as long as the sun shines. With enough solar panels and with the help of an energy bank, your appliances can work anytime of the day, when you require them.

There is also no limit to the applications your solar energy kit can power — water heaters, satellites, outdoor lights, gate openers, et cetera. The only limitation lies in our willingness to use them.

In the United States, government tax breaks are given to encourage people to turn to renewable energy to supplement their energy needs. Many corporations are also relying less on fossil fuel as they realize the harmful consequence of burning these toxic-releasing substances. Building solar panels from solar panel kits is one good way you can personally take environmental and energy concerns into your own hands.

Continue Reading:

1. About
2. 10 Reasons Why You Should Build Your Own Solar Panel
3. Benefits Of Using Residential Solar Panels