We all know that Electricity has been here since the early 1900’s. When it started, there wasn’t much demand for it, First of all, because most people didn’t have it in their houses, secondly, the only use for it was for light bulbs. Then came heaters, stoves, and then followed by electric appliances and everything else that work with electricity. well, I guess you know the story. I don’t need to tell you what works with electricity.
Today the demand is so strong for electricity, we have to find other ways how to produce it. Did you know that Canada is the number one producer of electricity in the world? United states have to buy energy from Canada, because the demand is to strong, in fact California is one of the states who buy’s the most electricity from Canada. In the 70s, an hydro electric plan was build in the north of the province of Quebec to produce power, thinking that this power plan would be enough for the next generation to come 200 watt solar panel kit
. Because population is growing so fast in North america, Canada had to build 3 more power plan. The problem is not building power plan! The problem is, you need water, lots of water to make the turbines turn, and when you build power plan you have to flood the territory, raise the level of the water, that mean kill everything that lives around.
I ear everyday, on TV, newspapers, magazines, that we have to save the planet. Did you know there’s areas in this world who don’t have Power, they don’t even know it exist, but on the other part of the world we as humans are wasting it. There is an alternative to this problem, and a good one. We have it on the top of our head everyday. It is Called Solar energy.
Solar cells, or photovoltaic cells are often silicon-based pieces of material that absorb the sun’s light. Not warmth, as in the thermal application Many of these solar cells are often combined in solar panels Numbers of solar panels can be combined and interlinked for greater power Solar energy excites the electrons in the solar cell and electricity is produced. As i was growing up near Seattle forty years ago, one of the “big” events in our lives was the building of Interstate 5, the north-south highway from the Canadian border to the Mexican border. As this huge swath of concrete cut through Seattle, all of a sudden we were able to look into neighborhoods that had been sheltered for years. Most of it was pretty boring, but one house stood out like a sore thumb; it was a stark, tall, natural wood house that faced south and had a three story tall sloped glass wall forming a sort of lean-to greenhouse kind of thing covering the whole south side. This I was told was a solar energy home, probably built by an engineering professor at the nearby University of Washington. Though in fact I never met anyone who actually knew anything about that house, the picture of a solar energy house and the knowledge of what kind of a person would build one was in my mind forever.
The thing is, that was just one expression of how solar energy could be used in a house, and a rather extreme one at that. What I have been discovering since is that there are an incredible number of choices that one has once the decision has been made to incorporate solar energy into how you live.
Taking steps toward living in more harmony with the natural solar energy that comes to earth every day can be as mild as putting up a set of solar lit house numbers, or putting solar powered pathway marker lights along the entry walkway of your house. It can be as wild as starting from scratch and designing a house that takes everything currently known about using energy from the sun and rolling them all into one project, forget about the cost. And, of course there is a lot of territory in between.
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