Recently when I was helping a friend with a home rehab, I was taken aback by the fuse box in the house. A ninety five year old house, it had been converted to electric in the early 1920 s. It had exactly four fuses; two for the upstairs and two for downstairs. It had maybe fifty or sixty amps total capacity depending on the fuses.
As we were packing a bunch of new electric hardware into reusable shopping bags, also purchased at the store, I couldn t help but wonder at how much power consumption has changed. We were installing a two hundred amp service with more than 15 breakers on each side of the panel. That s a lot of power from the power company, but I started thinking that it today s technology age does it all have to be from the power company? It sure would be a lot more eco friendly if all of that power did not have to come from the electric utility.
I had noticed in the electrical department where we were buying supplies that there was a new display; solar electric panels from a couple of different suppliers. Looking closely at the boxes and checking out brochures, these could be employed in several different ways around the house, or a vacation house or cabin.
The panels themselves are set to provide 12 volts DC current. One single panel provides enough 12 volt power to run low voltage landscape lighting. All that is needed is a battery charger/switch and 12 volt deep cycle battery. This setup allows larger, brighter low voltage lights than generally found with self contained solar lights, which generally contain one or two penlight size rechargeable batteries.
Looking further, I noticed that these panels could be wired in series, providing 12 volt DC power, but at higher amperage. By also buying a power inverter, this low volt high amperage power could be converted into 110/120 AC power. This could be used to power things like ventilation fans, sump pumps or even TV s and appliances. While still
a way off from energy independence, it actually provides for utility company energy reduction. And this was not some pie in the sky magazine article dreaming…this stuff was for sale!
Further down I saw something even more surprising. It was a small windmill with propellers slightly wider than a basketball backstop. It was mounted on a pole, about the size of a basketball pole. Like the solar panels, I quickly dug into the brochures and found that with only ten to twelve mile per hour intermittent winds, it provided about the same power as the solar panels. This was awesome, solar and wind power to provide clean energy to replace the hundreds of amps purchased from the power company, most from less than clean sources.
It was amazing to find out that choosing alternate energy for your house was as simple as choosing to by a reusable shopping bag. Well maybe not quite, but you can buy the both in the same store, and they are both green and eco friendly.
Author Resource:
Eliza Reeder writes articles that deal with environmental concerns and eco-friendly living. She encourages everyone to help protect our planet's future by doing things like using reusable bags. You can learn more at http://www.reusablebagsdepot.com
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