skylight solar

skylight solar

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Solar efficient homes are houses which are built with solar power use in mind, and often this is approached from a few angles at once. Generally, there are two major ways to use solar energy; active and passive. An example of active solar efficient power in use would be through the use of the familiar photovoltaic cells, also known as solar panels. While these have been all the rage since the seventies, they actually have become quite evolved these days in their makeup. Through years of development, they no longer only produce a slow and small output of electricity as they did decades before, nor are they as inordinately expensive as they once were. In fact, many people these days make their own solar panels in their garages as a weekend project, spending maybe a couple hundred dollars to make a single panel to power a refrigerator, television and computer all on one or two 2x4 foot panels.

Solar efficient homes that use passive solar energy are generally designed with the path of the sun in mind, having large southerly exposed windows, are perhaps "double-hulled" to create a passive solar-heated envelope, and may have many double-paned skylight windows to create a sort of "greenhouse" warmth to heat the home in the colder months. Generally, any home can benefit from passive solar energy - keeping the window curtains open to let the sunlight in saves on artificial lighting expense, as well as heating, as the sunlight heats up the room as it comes through the window. As long as your house is properly insulated, this passively gotten heat can equate to be a surprising amount. Closing the curtains in the summer helps cool off the room, and using artificial light in this case would be cost effective as using an air-conditioner would use up more electricity than the lights would.

Some solar efficient homes also use a solar furnace which focuses the sun's light and heat, concentrating it to be redistributed throughout the home. Whatever the technique, most homes designed to use solar power on any house-wide scale most often uses a number of techniques and methods all at once. Such homes use both active as well as passive solar energy applications in their makeup. For example, such a home may have a solar furnace in use, be double-walled to create a space in between the walls for convection heating from the sun's rays, skylights for passive solar heating as well, and also an array of photovoltaic solar panels for use in converting sunlight into usable electricity. Any home using both active and passive solar power extraction methods to provide power for the house, and utilizing some of the many ways of each, both active and passive, would be considered very solar efficient in its design.

If you're interested in learning more about solar efficiency and other things related to alternative energy, then you've got to check out the EcoPlusHome project.

Bryan Kenny and his family are an average North American family with one exception...they're living in the EcoPlusHome.

The EcoPlusHome is a prefabricated home powered by alternative energies like solar thermal, geothermal and photovoltaic. Bryan and his family will show the world that it is possible to live self sustained for a 12 month period by showcasing their journey living in the EcoPlusHome on their blog.

Bryan and his family welcome you to join their journey to self sufficiency on their blog http://ecoplushome.com/blog.

Solar Innovations'™ Retractable Skylight Demonstration