DIY Solar Power System
Estimating Your Home's Energy Needs
December
Considering a Solar Power System
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You can save money by reducing the cost of heat and power your home needs. How? I’ll cover that topic in late post. Every watt not used is at least a watt that doesn’t have to be produced, distributed, stored, or purchased!
So how does the sun fit into all this? The sun is an efficient source of solar energy that can be used to heat and / or power your home. There are two ways you can utilize solar energy to power your home.
First, you can encourage your local utility and state utility board to use more renewable energy sources, especially solar. You can become involved in the political and economic battle being fought over energy.
Second, you can enlist as a soldier in the battle against nonrenewable energy. You can install solar thermal and solar electric systems in your current home, next home, apartment, vacation cabin, recreation vehicle, business, or other energy-dependent residence.
Exactly how much will solar power systems cost you? Unfortunately, it’s not quite that easy. Solar power systems are becoming a commodity that you can quickly size and buy at your local super-hardware store. Even so, there are incentives, rebates, buybacks, equipment life, depreciation, and many other factors that vary based on what you’re doing and where you live. Be wary, though, as no program is safe from cuts while the legislature is in session.
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December
How much does Home Energy Cost?
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Which heating fuel is the most economical and efficient? The answer depends on the following:
In many situations, the fuel resource used to develop electricity is already determined by local availability and costs. In the Pacific Northwest, hydroelectric power is cheapest because water is abundant. In the eastern United States, the fuel is typically coal. In the Midwest, fuel oil and natural gas provide much of the heating fuel and most of the electricity. In California, it’s a combination, but primarily natural gas.
Many home appliances use electricity. Heating appliances such as furnaces, stoves, and water heaters might use electricity or a less-expensive heat source such as fuel oil or natural gas. The key here is what’s least expensive.
Heating fuel prices fluctuate. A few years ago the Energy Information Administration figured out the national average residential fuel costs and divided it by the typical fuel appliance efficiency to come up with some interesting comparisons
That’s right, electric heat costs more than three times as much as oil heat!
So how much do electric appliances cost to run? Not that much – unless you add it all up. Consider the following examples (source: Pacific Gas & Electric):
Here’s another important fact: it takes the power company about 3.3 kWh of energy to deliver 1 kWh of electricity to your home! That means your solar electric system saves more than just the power you don’t use.
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November
A load evaluation adds up all the energy loads in your home to help you figure out what things cost – and where you can save money. In the following load evaluation form, there’s a place to list each appliance in your home and calculate the average watt-hours it uses on an average day.
For example, a 19-inch color television may require 70W for 3 hours of viewing a day. That’s 210Wh (70 x 3). For an 800W coffeemaker that’s on 4 hours daily, it has a load of 3.2kWh. You get the picture.
What’s average? It depends on how much you rely on electricity to heat your water, air, and food. Your daily average will probably be somewhere between 15kWh and 20 kWh. Below 15kWh is relatively efficient and above 20kWh is wasteful. Your usage may vary.
Add up all the loads and you should have a good idea of how much energy it takes to keep your home comfortable. Next comes reality. Pull out your latest electric bill. It will probably be shown in kilowatt-hours or kWh, and will include the service dates(from, to), number of billing days, the prior and current meter readings, and the difference or total usage. The electric bill will then multiply usage by your rate to come up with a subtotal.
As you compile your load evaluation form, there will be many head scratchers: appliances that seem to use up more power than you think they should. That’s because they’re on even when they say “off”. What gives? Actually, these are called phantom loads. Examples include instant-on televisions in which power is on to keep the picture tube warmed up and ready to view. Electric clocks on appliances are also phantom loads, albeit low-amp loads. Appliances such as computer speaker systems and telephone answering systems that use a transformer box or wall wort are also phantom loads. Sure, they don’t take much juice, but each one adds up. A little 4-watt phantom load can cost $5 or $10 a year in electricity. An instant-on TV can cost lots more. It all adds up.
What can you do about phantom loads? Unplug ones you really don’t need. Or plug them into a power strip that has an on-off switch so you can turn off more than one. Beside electricity, your home uses lots of other energy. Depending on where you live, the primary heat source may be electricity, fuel oil, natural gas, coal, wood or state capital. So pull out the utility bills for the last 12 months to figure out how much you spent to heat water, air and food.
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November
How electricity works
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Electricity is the flow of electrons through a wire similar to how water flows through a pipe. To get water moving through a pipe, you can open up a faucet where the water is under pressure to push it down the pipe to where there is less pressure. Electricity flows in the same manner. The difference in pressure between one prong on the electric plug and the other makes the electricity flow down one wire and to the electrical appliance. That difference in pressure is measured in volts . The amount of electricity that actually flows is the current measured in amperes or amps . The resistance to flow that the wire (such as the pipe) offers is measured in ohms .
Electric power is measured in watts. A watt-hour (Wh) is a unit measure of energy, 1 watt of power during 1 hour of time. Power used over time is measured in kilowatt-hours (kWh), or 1,000 watts used for 1 hour. Your electric power used over a given time is the power in watts or kilowatts multiplied by the time in hours.
Here’s the power formula: V x A = W. Volts multiplied by amps equals wattage. Power is the force times the flow.The amount of power used over a given time is the power in watts or kilowatts multiplied by the time in hours.
One more term: load . A load is anything in an electrical circuit that, when the circuit is turned on, draws power that circuit. A refrigerator is a load. A toaster, when toasting, is a load. A light, when switched on, sa load. So figure out how much energy your home needs starts with totaling up all the loads as measured n watt-hours. That’s called a load evaluation .
How does electricity get to you? Somewhere there’s an electrical power-generating plant. It converts fuel, probably coal or oil, into electricity using turbines. High-voltage power lines then distribute the power to stations, then substations, and then to transformers that deliver the electricity to your home as 220V.
So how do you get 110V electric service out of this? The power comes in on three wires; two have 100V each and the other is neutral. The main power panel in your house is wired to provide voltage between the neutral wire(ground) and one(110V) or both (220V) hot wires. The power panel then distributes the power to specific circuits wired when your home was built. The circuits might be wired for loads of 15A, 20A, 30A, or some other value. To protect the appliance(s), the electricity first goes through a circuit breaker that stops electricity flow if it exceeds the rating.
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November
Understanding of home energy
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Home energy sources include electricity produced from oil, gas, coal, biomass, solar, wind and others as well as heating fuel. The average U.S. home pays about $1,200 a year in energy costs. In some parts of the country, winter bills for heating alone can be many hundreds of dollars. In other areas, summer air conditioning costs can match that. So where does the energy go? According to the report of U.S. Department of Energy, that about 44 percent is used for heating and cooling; 33 percent for lighting, cooking, and appliances; about 14 percent for water heating; and the final 9 percent for refrigeration. Home energy use Btu (pronounced bee-tee-you), a British thermal unit , as a measurement of heat energy. For example, to product one million Btus of heat energy need 293 kWhs of electricity. (1 btu = 1 055.05585 joules)
Btu Calculator: http://hearth.com/calc/btucalc.html
Those Btus can be used to develop heat for the house’s air or to develop electricity to run appliances. And utility companies count Btus in quads .
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