Every second the sun uses 620 million tons of hydrogen, a process which sends 174,000,000,000,000,000W of energy to our planet per second (if your wondering this figure is better known as 174 petawatts). Currently less that 10% of the earth’s total energy usage is from solar power – meaning we take advantage of only a pitiful of the 0.0000002% of the solar energy available to us. At a time where people’s homes are being swallowed by the sea we, as a species owe it to the planet to take advantage of the suns plentiful bounty. Read on and find out using solar energy at home can be of benefit to you.
Solar Sourced Electricity: Solar Photovoltaic (PV) systems, can be placed on your roof to harness the suns energy in order to create electricity that can be used to power your home – whether you use that power to make your own light, keep your food cold or heat it up is up to you. You will undoubtedly be thinking “it’s pretty cloudy here – how much energy can we really gain?” Recent advances in solar technology has made the conversion of the suns energy more efficient, so much so that 20m2 of solar panels on a typical UK roof is enough to supply on average 40% of the households total yearly energy.
Solar Heated Water: That exotic feeling of sun warmed water previously available whilst on vacation can now be recreated in your own home (minus the exotic climate, exciting food and carefree lifestyle). Solar panels can convert the suns heat into heat for your hot water, at a rate which would account for 60% of hot water for an average UK household. Allowing you to take guilt free 30 minute showers!
Financial Incentives: There are current UK schemes which offer financial incentive to using the suns power. The Renewable Heat Incentive is offer of a one of payment of £300 for using solar energy panels; this will go a long way towards covering the costs of installation. Furthermore, the government offer a scheme known as Feed in Tariffs, which mean that people are paid for the energy they generate themselves – even if they use the energy themselves!
The Downside: If you have a quaint cottage in the countryside, then the thought of coating your roof with brash black tiles may be repulsive. If this sounds like you then you may want to consider installing solar panels on the floor or walls. Another further downside is the fairly steep installation costs.
Conclusion: If you can swallow the initial payments and if you don’t find the panels to be an eye sore then I can think of no reasons not to get onboard with solar power. The financial incentives alone make the decision a sound investment, not to mention the fact that you can’t put a price on the earth’s wellbeing.
Written by Jacob Catt on behalf of Gregor Heating, who offer advice and installation of solar solutions.
This article is contributed by Jacob Catt on behalf of Gregor Heating and posted by Rizwan Ahmad
Author and founder of www.cyberockk.com, He is a tech blogger from India and he
loves to share his thoughts by writing articles on this site to the different
topics related to technology world,