From sailing the seven seas to gathering water for the mill, wind has always been an important energy source. It has helped with food production, water irrigation, trade and commerce and morphed into aiding mankind in producing electricity for their residences and workplaces.

Wind turbines first showed up in the 19th century, and in the 20th century America’s first wind farm was built in Vermont and powered many areas during World War II. With the advancement of technology, it is possible for wind energy to be an affordable solution for homeowners to power their own homes.

You can both save money and reduce your carbon footprint by using wind energy. It is cost effective to put together for your home, and a humungous wind turbine like you see on a wind farm is not necessary for residential use.

You can purchase and install goods for a grid-connected or stand-alone system for your home. When you are still connected to the grid, wind energy can produce extra power, saving your need to use the utility company’s electricity with the company picking up any slack in your total production. When you go off-grid, you actually have the ability to sell money back to the power company.

Stand alone systems make trasnferring energy to locations far from the grid system more affordable. With either system, the average air speed should work out to around 10 mph. It’s important to have a measure of the wind speed where you live, and the National Climatic Data Center can provide this information.

The types of equipment you sill need to provide your home with affordable wind energy include a wind turbine, a tower, wiring, controllers, and inverters or batteries. The rotor and generator will be mounted on the tail of the frame of the turbine.

A general rule of thumb when figuring on what type of wattage you will be needing to produce is: 1.5 kW turbines fit the requirements of a 300 kWh monthly usage wherein the average wind speed is 14 mph. Off-grid systems would need to be three times as powerful. When the wind blows high the turbine usually has an automatic speed governing system to keep it in check so it doesn’t spin too hard or too fast.

When you purchase your system there is a self-supporting, free standing tower and the more popular guyed lattice tower. The latter is cheaper and is supported by cables and earth anchors. Stand alones take batteries to store the extra power generated so that you can still have electricity when the winds are calm.

You’ll need an inverter to convert energy from the battery to AC current. You can even buy a stand-alone system that piggy-backs with a solar cell. Local governmental agencies actually offer incentives such as rebates and discounts when you install and use these systems.

Many manufacturers produce wind turbines for the home. You’ll need to evaluate three and five blade turbines and the KwH produced to be sure you have enough energy for what you need to power, plus materials such as plastic or nylong synthetic materials. Some are more aerodynamic than others and the way in which your turbine is mounted to the tower.

Each manufacturer will have listed the specs for their equipment, so don’t be intimidated into thinking you need a physics degree to understand wind energy. It is affordable for homeowners now, so there’s no need to wait. Help save the planet and save your wallet with affordable wind energy for the home. You’ll be delighted at what you can do!

When we hear about how thinking globally and acting locally, power is often not at the forefront of our minds. But perhaps it should be. The environmental impact of transporting electricity is easily as taxing on the world climate as transporting hard consumer goods can be. Transporting power creates a direct waste of that power, creating a larger carbon footprint.

An immediate question springs to mind, however. Isn’t all power produced at least somewhat locally? In short, yes. However, it is important to narrow down what we consider local. If your power is produced 100 miles away, that’s not terribly far in today’s world, but some of the electricity will be lost over that 100 miles. If the power is produced on your roof or in your backyard, none of it will be lost (or at least very little of it).

There are a set of factors at play here, primarily technological. While our technologies for producing power have advanced, our technologies for moving that power have not advanced- or least they haven’t advanced much. There are some promising technological advances on the horizon, but they have not yet come to fruition. Thus, in short, every mile that electricity has to travel is a mile in which the amount of electricity will degrade. By the time all is said and done, you may be left with 80% of the power you created, leaving 20% as waste.

It seems clear, then, that truly green power is created close to where it is used. This prevents the degradation of the signal that occurs in power lines, in transformers, etc. However, that is not the only benefit. Producing local power takes advantage of whatever natural form of energy is avaialable- be that solar, wind or hydro.

As it becomes easier and easier to build solar cells and wind turbines (not to mention micro-hydro systems) at home, it is worth considering ones environmental impact. The benefits are numerous- it save the environment, saves your power bills, and could even make you money (think tax breaks or even selling power back to the power company). Numerous resources are available to the home builder of green power, allowing it to be used in many different environments (rural, urban, suburban). Between the guides available today, the necessity of saving the climate, the potential financial savings, and the long-term satisfaction of building green power, building your own home power system is more attractive than ever.

Damon Westchester is the editor of www.build-green-power.com.

Everywhere you turn, from TV or advocacy groups to the Obama administration, people are talking about solar power. Why all this interest in solar energy? There are a few disadvantages, but where are also a lot of advantages that have so many people excited. Overcoming the disadvantages can be accomplished if you have some knowledge and are willing to put in a little work yourself.

Advantages

Never-ending energy source

There is a never-ending supply of solar energy because it is produced by the sun all the time. Every day, all year the sun is producing energy. While solar power will continue to be available as long as the sun keeps shining, there is a limited supply of fossil fuels like oil and natural gas. The price of these limited fossil fuels will continue to increase as more and more are used up. The opposite is true of solar energy! It will never run out and the cost will continue to go down as technology gets better and better.

Free energy

As long as you can look out the window and see the sun shining, solar electricity will continue to be free. The ongoing cost of solar electricity is almost nothing aside from maintenance of the equipment. You can completely disconnect from the power grid if you install enough solar panels. This is called off grid living. Some people intentionally stay connected to the electric grid, are able to generate more power than they use and actually get paid for the extra electricity by the power company!

No greenhouse gasses

For those people worried about global warming, solar energy is the solution! Solar electricity produces absolutely no greenhouse gasses, unlike fossil fuels like oil and natural gas. If you wish to reduce your carbon footprint, solar energy is a great way to do it. There are no emissions of any kind produced by solar power.

Lower dependence on foreign oil

One of the biggest threats to national security is widely considered to be dependence on foreign oil. Dependence on foreign oil is considered by many people to be one of the biggest threats to national security today. Our dependence on foreign oil can be reduced by the use of solar energy. Any power that is currently generated with foreign oil can be directly replaced by domestically produced solar electricity.

Disadvantages

Initial cost

Most people consider initial cost to the be the biggest disadvantages to solar electricity. The initial cost of solar panels can be quite high, while the ongoing costs of solar electricity are very small. If you want to see how much it would cost to install enough solar panels to power your home and get a spreadsheet to do the calculations, please take a look at Solar Panel Cost.

With the required know-how, the initial cost can be reduced a great deal by building solar panels yourself. If you are looking for instructions on how to build your own solar panel, check out Do It Yourself Solar Panel.

Space

Solar panels must be oriented so they point to the south and also need enough space for all the panels. Solar panels work best in areas that get a lot of sun. Solar maps are available that show the average sun in every part of the country. A larger score means that a solar panel of the same size will produce more electricity than a solar panel in an area with a smaller score. If you live in an area with a lower score, it doesn’t necessarily indicate that you can’t use solar electricity, however you will need more solar panels to generate enough electricity for your house.

As you can see, there are advantages and disadvantages to solar energy. The advantages of solar power, though, outweigh the disadvantages. If you build your own solar panel, you can avoid many of the disadvantages. For the best guide to building your own solar panel, take a look at GreenDIYEnergy Review.

Last time in my “How To Go Green” post, we made an attempt to define what it means to “go green”. I said I was a “bright green”. Now, in going green we need to understand a carbon footprint. A simple equation would be the lifestyle we choose to live will affect how we directly or indirectly contribute to greenhouse gas production. Now if we can measure it, we may be able to reduce it.

Do we have any concrete evidence that global warming has occurred in the last century? Does this evidence cover millions of years? Are we in a repeating cycle? I found many articles that cite articles that cite other articles ad nausea. Most eventually would point to a few studies by oceanographers and some would point to the major study done on the ice pack.

Good information indeed, but something kept nagging at me. So I looked up the age of the earth. The best guess is around 4.54 billion years. If I take this figure and divide it into the ice pack age, 680K, we get about .015 percent. This .015 percent is the sample we are using as evidence the earth is getting warmer based on the amounts of C02 found in the ice pack. The recorded temperature data is even smaller at .00004 percent.

This is a very small sample to judge temperature trends on, but mind you, we use even smaller samples in biology and astronomy every day. So the size of the data is not so important. But is this data a blip that will naturally return to normal some years down the line? Moreover, even if it does, what have I lost by the responsible use of the resources I have been given to use?

I am not in any way upset by the talk and use of carbon offsets. That is just being responsible. I do have one concern though: What long term evidence do we have that we are not going to adversely affect the climate with the reforestation processes we have put in place? In the mean time, when I go to a store, I try to get all I need in one trip and not make unnecessary trips — which will reduce my fuel use.

For one, with technology, we have greatly reduced our demand for electricity. Computers, CAD software, and new packaging methods have helped us reduce the size and the electrical demand of appliances.

Integrated circuits are reduced to sizes unimaginable just a few years ago. Televisions, computer displays, and a host of other display devices have reduced our demand for energy to levels unheard of 20 years ago.

When we know what our personal carbon footprint is, we have information — information to change and provide for future generations.

What is your personal carbon footprint? Check out the Carbon Footprint Calculator or CFC resource in the link section of my author resource box and start reducing your carbon footprint today.

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