Residential Solar Power

Environmental concerns are rampant issue that everybody is concerned about lately.  There has been an ecological imbalance that several scientists and researchers are working on to find ways and develop alternative energy sources to regain the balance and one of these is solar power. One thing that they discovered is that now you can also utilize the solar energy right within the home using residential solar panels and do your job to help improve the environment.

In installing residential solar panels, the following factors are worth considering:

* You should know how much sunlight your home receives throughout the year. In a few areas where sunlight is not available for most of the days in the year, installing residential power may not be a good idea. Installing solar panels in such places will be expensive and will require several solar and heavier power storage arrangements.

* You should know how many appliances you are going to power using the solar energy. For higher wattages, the number and cost of residential power will be higher.

* You should also check if you can take advantage of government’s grant for installing residential power. If you are eligible for such a grant, installation of residential solar panels at your home will become much more cost effective and rewarding.

* You should check with all the available resources, possibly on the Internet to find out the latest technology of residential power. Buying solar can be worth every penny only if you buy solar after extensive research about your alternatives and after weighing all the pros and cons related to installing residential panel.

* Check you pool system.

After you have enough information and well-equipped about the residential solar system and taken everything into consideration, you are now ready to make a decision on buying solar panels. You can also take into consideration these factors to help you save a long term budget and saving a huge amount of cost on you electricity bills. This way, it will not only help you save money for the future but a better world for you and your children’s sake.

Green Christmas

Everybody is busy with this season. Christmas is the spirit of remembering Christ’s birth and showing love by means of giving gifts to others.

Perhaps, the most unique way of showing the real essence of Christmas can also be shown through taking care of our nature and environment. Christmas season and our environment co-exist. With a little effort and imagination, we can reduce the environmental impact of the holiday season.

How about spending less on Christmas gifts? Look for locally made gifts - many gifts in today's marketplace come from halfway around the world, and the impact of transportation contributes significantly to greenhouse emissions and global warming. Local craft fairs and artisan shops are a good source for gifts that come without the added costs of transportation. 

Support gifts made from recycled sources. It is not just fun and exciting thing to do, by supporting these businesses; it will help reduce the waste stream while promoting the concept of making best use of available materials.

No to 'battery-operated” gifts – Based from studies and EPA, about 40% of all battery sales occur during the holiday season. Discarded batteries are an environmental hazard. So, why give gifts that have an impact on our environment as well as our children’s health?

Buy toys that are more of educational rather than the famous toy robot on their favorite cartoon movie. Let us teach them to use more their skills in reading and thinking than playing and promoting violence.

Christmas is a time for giving and a time for family. What a great opportunity to start a family tradition of giving back to the earth and instilling the values of sustainable living to your children, friends and community. Start an annual, earth-friendly Christmas family tradition! It will also get you outdoors for a few hours to build an appetite for the big dinner.

Start an annual activity in your family to get to know nature more. Count the birds. Donate some cage in your local zoo. Or even adopt a pet. This will help you discover something from each member of the family and they would appreciate nature more.

Mountain climbing with the family members is the best way to bond for this season.

Giving some pledge of planting a small tree together is the best way to show you value nature. Donating Non-Biodegradable and Biodegradable trash bins is also an excellent move.

Use LED (Light Emitting Diode) lights for house and Christmas tree lighting. Do you know that LED is 95% less energy than larger, traditional holiday bulbs and last up to 100,000 hours when used indoors?

Aside from rampant fire caused by defective Christmas lights, turning off and outdoor house decorative lighting at bedtime, would save you a lot of energy bills and help save our energy crisis as well.

Live potted trees - if you buy a small tree in a large pot, you may be able to reuse the tree for 2- 3 years without having to plant or re-pot the tree. 

Reuse gift wraps where possible. You can also ask your kids to think more artistically by making some colorful gift wraps out of old newspapers and magazines.

Lastly, promote an activity in your family, community and friends where you can make them aware about our current situation in global warming and at least ask them to think of something that they can contribute to help save our environment. At least volunteer to plant a tree, go solar, clean our environment and air, etc.

I am pretty sure, this is more than just Christmas season if and only we would think and act like that – a better and greener Christmas season ever.

About the Non-Biodegradable Materials

Biodegradable refers to organic material that can be broken down by living organisms.  It is said that this can break down and once again become part of the earth and soil like food scraps and papers.

But most of us often take for granted the term “biodegradable.” Which can be somehow becomes dangerous if it’s already uncontrollable to handle. Have we thought of what is the meaning of nonbiodegradable and its effects on our everyday living?

Nonbiodegradable are wastes materials that cannot be broken down by other living organisms. These are plastics (polyethylene, nylon, rayon, polyester, lexan, pvc (polyvinyl chloride), dacron). Metals such as iron, platinum, steel, tin, aluminum, lead, silver, gold, mercury, zinc etc.  Ceramics like carbon fiber and fiberglass. Foams. Circuit boards and silicon based materials.

In our everyday living, we are using tons of nonbiodegradable materials that we think are useful but in the long run, it will destroy our environment. And we are part of that destruction - whether we are like it or not.

When we disposed materials as such, our nature cannot reuse these materials to fuel the cycle of life and it will remain as pollution in the environment.  All the resources and energy used to make the material in the first place, are trapped within the waste. And because nature cannot breakdown the material; the matter and energy cannot be reclaimed and reused by the environment to generate more organic matter and energy.

This means when we rely on non-biodegradable materials, pollution is being formed and unsustainable efficiency is created. It is just like eating something that our intestines cannot digest, and so we tend to get sick and everything else is not normal.

With different government agencies putting a halt to this, there are different programs and number of places where we can throw our waste.

When we clean our homes and ourselves the products we use end up as waste washed down the drains and into sewers or septic tanks. Sewerage waste is treated which changes most of that waste to carbon dioxide and water with some minerals, waste elements and non-biodegradable materials left over. The treated water is then pumped back into a river or ocean. This means that the non-biodegradable matter in the products we use may eventually end up as pollution in our waterways (source: Waste and Sustainability - Biodegradable and Non-Biodegradable Materials by Trudy Slabosz).

Thus, disposing and having the knowledge of separating the biodegradable and nonbiodegradable is a good start. It is also best to try and make sure any biodegradable material waste is composted and does not end up in landfill. Landfills may include internal waste disposal sites (where a producer of waste carries out their own waste disposal at the place of production) as well as sites used by many producers. Many landfills are also used for other waste management purposes, such as the temporary storage, consolidation and transfer, or processing of waste material (sorting, treatment, or recycling).

Ecosystem: Have We Gotten Too Far?

An ecosystem is a biological environment consisting of all the organisms living in a particular area, as well as all the nonliving, physical components of the environment with which the organisms interact, such as air, soil, water, and sunlight. It is all the organisms in a given area, along with the nonliving (abiotic) factors with which they interact; a biological community and its physical environment (source: Wikipedia).

The entire array of organisms inhabiting a particular ecosystem is called a community.  Ecosystems, plants and other photosynthetic organisms are the producers that provide the food. Ecosystems can be permanent or temporary. Ecosystems usually form a number of food webs. Ecosystems are functional units consisting of living things in a given area, non-living chemical and physical factors of their environment, linked together through nutrient cycle and energy flow.

Ecosystems have become particularly important politically since the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) - ratified by 192 countries - defines "the protection of ecosystems, natural habitats and the maintenance of viable populations of species in natural surroundings"(source: United Nations Environment Programme. Convention on Biological Diversity. June 1992. UNEP Document no. Na.92-78) as a commitment of ratifying countries. This has created the political necessity to spatially identify ecosystems and somehow distinguish among them. The CBD defines an "ecosystem" as a "dynamic complex of plant, animal and micro-organism communities and their non-living environment interacting as a functional unit" (source: Wikipedia).

With the need of protecting ecosystems, the political need arose to describe and identify them efficiently. Vreugdenhil et al. (Wikipedia) argued that this could be achieved most effectively by using a physiognomic-ecological classification system, as ecosystems are easily recognizable in the field as well as on satellite images. They argued that the structure and seasonality of the associated flora and fauna, complemented with ecological data (such as elevation, humidity, and drainage), are each determining modifiers that separate partially distinct sets of species. This is true not only for plant species, but also for species of animals, fungi and bacteria. The degree of ecosystem distinction is subject to the physiognomic modifiers that can be identified on an image and/or in the field. Where necessary, specific fauna elements can be added, such as seasonal concentrations of animals and the distribution of coral reefs.

The health of humans like all organisms depends on an ecosystem that sustains life in general. However, studies show some evidence that most life-support systems are far from healthy, therefore posing a big threat on human health. It is proven also that some gains in life expectancy and quality of life made during the twentieth century are at risk of being reversed in the twenty-first century.

It is being put to blame that our ecosystem degradation would lead to numerous health factors that poses risks for human life like pollution in water, air and land, the climate change, emerging new diseases from different breakthrough on viruses and bacteria, resurgence of old diseases, and so on and so forth.

With this, it also includes different studies and methods being used to discover natural gas, mining and coal; thus leads to an imbalance in our ecosystem. The main culprit – humans and its advanced technologies discoveries.

We can achieve a balance ecosystem only if we know how to take care of it while discovering and unraveling different breakthrough technologies. It is not that easy task though. As we gear towards the 21st century fever.

But let us always remember the saying that “history repeats itself.” And to be able to achieve a balance ecosystem, hand in hand we need to fully understand the causes and effects of the advancement of technology breakthroughs in our everyday living.

The Best Key to Net Positive Development

We often hear about the phrase “net positive development.” What does this really mean?

The book, Positive Development, articulates and advocates a paradigm shift from our ‘managerialist’ approaches to environmental problems to a (positive) ‘design-based’ approach.  It shows how our ideas about sustainable development have been built upon negative premises. It is all about restoring and reviving what has left by the inevitable damage caused by development.

‘Positive Development’ refers to built environments that have net positive ecological (and social) impacts - beyond pre-settlement conditions.  The idea derives from a radical critique of how we plan, design, retrofit and manage the built environment (source: www.sustainability.org.au).

With our environmental management practices, it targets to offset ecological losses with social gains, which we often take for granted in the final design.

A system of development that does not pay its own way over its life cycle can no longer be seen as acceptable.  Ecological restoration or regeneration is not enough, because we have already exceeded the Earth’s ecological carrying capacity.  Therefore, just to support existing bioregions and populations, cities would need to increase regional carrying capacity.  The premise of Positive Development is that built environment design can have net positive ecological as well as social impacts.  That is, we can retrofit urban areas to increase net ecological carrying capacity in cities to increase natural and social capital.  However, this would require a new approach to planning, management and design (source: www.sustainability.org.au).

In the case of how buildings are built, we should bear in mind that aside from producing clean energy, water, soil, air, and food, it should be net positive.  

When you say net positive, it should create ecological and social positive 

development for nature itself. Sustainability enters into the picture by balancing both our ecosystem and 

our nature.

In contrast to restorative design, therefore, Positive Development would aim to expand both the ecological base (life support system), and increase the public estate (equitable access to means of survival).  This will require nothing short of the ecological modernisation of the architecture and planning professions themselves (source: www.sustainability.org.au).

How do we measure impacts? We do it the right way by counting on positive ecological impacts and negative as well and try to balance both.

Thus, governments expend resources in trying to mitigate the impacts of developments proposed by investors.

 Some of the criteria for an ecologically Positive Development would be:

·         Meet a ‘sustainability standard’, where development leaves the ecology, as well as society, better off after construction than before.

·         Be ‘reversible’ (demountable, compostable and/or highly adaptable).

·         Over-compensate for both embodied and ecological waste in production through substantial positive offsite impacts.

Source: www.sustainability.org.au 

Keeping the balance between our ecological system and environment is the best key to net positive development.

 Visit our website for more information about energy efficiency solutions: http://www.ensight.com.au

The Wind and the Power

Wind Power according to Wikipedia, is the conversion of wind  energy into a useful form of energy, such as using wind turbines to make electricity, wind mills for mechanical power, wind pumps  for pumping water or drainage, or sails to propel ships.

At the end of 2009, worldwide nameplate capacity of wind-powered generators was 159.2 gigawatts (GW). Energy production was 340 TWh, which is about 2% of worldwide electricity usage and has doubled in the past three years. Several countries have achieved relatively high levels of wind power penetration (with large governmental subsidies), such as 20% of stationary electricity production in Denmark, 14% in Ireland and Portugal 11% in Spain, and 8% in Germany in 2009. As of May 2009, 80 countries around the world are using wind power on a commercial basis.

Wind power is free natural resources that can easily be developed as a source of electricity just like the sun. Humans have been using wind power for at least more than 6,000 years. We have examples like windmills, water pumping windmills and sailboats in propelling.

It helps in our everyday living especially allowing the farming and ranching of vast areas otherwise devoid of readily accessible water. Wind pumps contributed to the expansion of rail transport systems throughout the world, by pumping water from water wells for the steam locomotives. The multi-bladed wind turbine atop a lattice tower made of wood or steel was, for many years, a fixture of the landscape throughout rural America. When fitted with generators and battery banks, small wind machines provided electricity to isolated farms.

It also existed on various countries the development of small wind turbines for lighting of isolated rural buildings in the 20th century.

The modern wind power industry began in 1979 with the serial production of wind turbines by Danish manufacturers Kuriant, Vestas,Nordtank, and Bonus. These early turbines were small by today's standards, with capacities of 20–30 kW each. Since then, they have increased greatly in size, with the Enercon E-126 capable of delivering up to 7 MW, while wind turbine production has expanded to many countries (source: Wikipedia).

To be able to have a successful wind power, grid management, capacity factor and wind penetration should correlate.

These means, there should be enough studies on how get power from wind. Enough support of funds and research methodologies from the government. Lastly, since wind is everywhere, we should learn to appreciate it and not take them for granted.

 As an alternative power, there have been so much studies, debates, trials and errors that have been done a long time ago. Until now, different organizations are trying to rely and find answers to wind as one of our alternative solutions in power source.

It will be amazing to see one day that we are maximizing the utilization of our natural resources including wind. Someday, with all the pros and cons of getting power from the wind, I am pretty much sure it will have more advantage than disadvantage in using wind as one of our alternatives in getting power. 

Malaria and the Climate Change

Malaria cases in East African highland areas hitherto unaffected by the disease have caused worry that global warming is creating new mosquito breeding grounds but experts disagree on whether there is actually any link between the two.

"We have recently seen waves of epidemics in highland areas... They have actually killed people," said Dr. Amos Odiit, who was until October head of clinical pediatrics at Mulago hospital in the Ugandan capital Kampala.

The first cases of malaria in Uganda's western Kabale region, which rises 2,000 metres above sea level, were reported in 2007, said Seraphine Adibaku, the head of the national programme against malaria.

"It is climate change. Kabale is not as cold as before," she added. (Source:NAIROBI (AFP))

According to climate experts also known as climatologists, Africa has become warmer by 0.7 degrees Celsius over a century, which result to a spread of malaria as mosquitoes that carry the parasite thrive in warmer environment and cannot survive in temperatures below 15 degrees.

But there are still arguments that have something to do whether it has an effect due to global warming.

As for Dr. Andrew Githeko from Kenya, who leads a research project into climate change and human health, the relationship between the two phenomena is clear.

"There is a very direct link between malaria and climate. As climate changes further, more areas will become suitable for transmission  of the malaria parasite,” argued Githeko (source: Yahoo News).

Nonetheless, it is still in one’s state of economic progress and the development of health agencies and departments whether they are aware of the current situation and the correlation between malaria spread and the climate change.

True enough, malaria death related cases rises in certain areas due to rising global temperatures and it is spreading like an epidemic especially in areas where medicines and information dissemination is limited.

Rory Nefdt, a UNICEF official in charge of malaria control in east and southern Africa, conceded that climate change creates favourable conditions for the spread of malaria, but says public health programmes can, if implemented properly, outweigh the effects of climate change (source: yahoo News).

With the real scenario of what we are facing right now. With the effects and impact of global warming in our everyday lives plus our daily activities, everyone should be aware and find ways how to deal with this.

The local and international organizations should focus on how to deal with these kinds of effects to reach out and give as many as they can information regarding our present situation in climate change and global warming in general. 

Energy Conservation - What We Can Do About

Are we aware that we are consuming more than conserving energy at present? Do you know that it has a big impact on amounts of pollution, on natural resources, and creating problems in our landfill space?

Because of our habit of being more complacent and with the birth of different electronic gadgets, we are overwhelmed to the point that we forgot to take care and tend to abuse our natural resources. We are unaware of how big the impact would be in the environment on a daily basis with what we are doing everyday.

First way I think is to be aware of our current situation, issues like global crisis, climate change, energy crisis and environmental degradation. That is a fact. With that, we are also unaware of the positive effect each of us can have by taking small steps towards saving energy in the home, and recycling.

Go Recycle

Recycling involves processing used materials (waste) into new products to prevent waste of potentially useful materials, reduce the consumption of fresh raw materials, reduce energy usage, reduce air pollution (from incineration) and water pollution (from landfilling) by reducing the need for "conventional" waste disposal, and lower greenhouse gas emissions as compared to virgin production. Recycling is a key component of modern waste reduction and is the third component of the "Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" waste hierarchy (source: Wikipedia).

          Recyclable materials include many kinds of glass, paper, metal, plastic, textiles, and electronics. Although similar in effect, the composting or other reuse of biodegradable waste – such as food or garden waste– is not typically considered recycling. Materials to be recycled are either brought to a collection center or picked up from the curbside, then sorted, cleaned, and reprocessed into new materials bound for manufacturing.

Instead of letting metal, glass, plastics, electronics, textiles and paper dumped in the garbage can, which can lead to cause pollution and chemical effect into the soil, water and air; why not turn them into a new, more energy efficient product to be utilized multiple times. Here are some facts on recycling:

• The average person throws away 60 pounds of plastic packaging every year.
• If everyone recycled their Sunday paper, 500,000 trees would not have to be cut down, every week.
• For every 700 new paper bags, one 15-year old tree has to be cut down.
• It takes 30 percent less energy to make paper from recycled materials than raw materials.
• It takes 16 times more energy to create a new aluminum can, than one from recycled material.
• The energy saved from recycling one aluminum can is equal to the energy used to power a computer for three hours, or watch the television for one hour.
• It takes 30 percent less energy to manufacture glass from recycled materials.

(Source: The Power of Saving Energy in the Home: Energy Conservation Facts by BStone).

If you want to start and help conserve energy, begin at your own home. Turning off lights, purchasing energy efficient products approved by environmental committee, unplugging electrical appliances when not in use would make a big difference. You would say that it only has small impact on energy consumption – for now. But overall, in the long run you will see that it has big impact.

Furthermore, use efficient, compact fluorescent bulbs. It can last five times longer, and consume 70 percent less energy than conventional bulbs.

By leaving computer monitors on overnight, or not having them on energy saving modes, nine million tons of carbon dioxide emissions are wasted every year (source: BStone). So it is still best to unplug it when not in use.

Turning on the water heater down by 10 degrees, 45 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions would be saved every year.

Asking all the members of your household to refrain from opening and closing the door of your refrigerator would cut down your energy consumption.

Turning down the thermostat 10 degrees every night will reduce heat energy use, and costs, by around 10-20 percent.

Updating or fortifying home insulation, turn off lights if it is a sunny day, putting more ventilations at home like windows to refrain from using an air condition and electric fan, appreciating the nature, the weather and taking advantage from it would really help cost down electricity bill and at the same time conserve a lot of energy. Would that sound cool?

We Can Make It Happen

Yes, we can make it happen now and not tomorrow. Every opportunity, in every way, we can always help restore our natural resources and conserve much needed energy for a greener, brighter and better future.

Climate and the Mental State

Climate change is here to stay. That is a fact. Another fact, its effects are inevitable. And we could feel and see the effects of it including the changes and trends of increased natural disasters like storms, droughts, and hurricanes.

But along with these, another effect that we often take for granted is the various mental problems that resulted due to these.

As people tend to experience different effects of the climate change, they become more depressed, anxious, fearful, and even just hearing the sound of a strong wind, a thunder or seeing a lightning would terrify them dramatically. Thus, mental problems occur.

It is feared that this will cause more mental problems because most of the people are not informed and not that prepared with the way things are changing in our climate.

When rainfall patterns are altered -- something we're already seeing around the world -- farmers and families suffer not just from associated economic losses, but also from the mental stress that inevitably results.

And this is a wakeup call to everybody, to be aware and at least be well-equipped when disaster hits us.

Although there are prescription drugs and some tests being done in connection with the climate change and how people react, still it is in one’s mental state on how he/she deals with it.

Perhaps, a program from the government to make the people ready, keep informed and be aware of our climate situation would help a lot. A counseling group or a support group would also help to ease out the trauma that one has experienced due to the dramatic effects of these changes.

Nevertheless, if we will keep the balance between the changes that it’s bringing in and how we tend to react to that, chances are it will bring positive effect on us and perhaps will keep us sane.

Additional reference:

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-12/kcl-mio120309.php

What Solar Power Can Do

The SUN as we all know is the center of the universe. We have been getting a lot of energy from the sun. It has many uses. We get vitamin D from the sun when we expose our body from the sunlight. Yet of course, we also tend to get skin cancer with too much exposure from it (too much is a poison as they say).

In our everyday living, we use sun for drying clothes and our crops get nutrients from it too so we can have a good healthy food on our dining table.

And the recent one, we get energy source from the sun. The sun is 150 million kilometers away and amazingly powerful. Imagine getting a small fraction of the sun's energy that hits the Earth (around a hundredth of a millionth of a percent) is enough to meet all our power needs many times over. In fact, every minute, enough energy arrives at the Earth to meet our demands for a whole year - if only we could harness it properly.

That is why, all over the world, the government is funding all the research to get solar power and consider it as an alternative for our energy source. Simplest yet most effective and efficient. And this also helps lessen harmful factors that deplete our ozone layer and help save our environment too.

In Australia, the government is offering grants available to help the community, schools, government agencies and business establishments install solar power. EnSight is one of the solar companies that promote solar energy including consultations from different firms on how to go green or help you find alternative ways for energy source.

The main three factors that we use sun as energy:

1. Solar Cells - Also known as "photovoltaic", "PV" or "photoelectric" cells can convert light directly into electricity.

2. Solar water heating – Wherein a direct heat from the sun is used to heat water in glass panels on your roof. In this way, there is no need for you to use so much gas or electricity to heat your water at home. This will help you cut your fuel bills as it will help your central heating system.

3. Solar Furnaces – This uses a huge array of mirrors to concentrate the sun's energy into a small space and produce very high temperatures. Solar cells provide the energy to run satellites that orbit the Earth. These give us satellite TV, telephones, navigation, weather forecasting, the internet and all manner of other facilities.

Cells are described as photovoltaic cells when the light source is not necessarily sunlight. These are used for detecting light or other electromagnetic radiation near the visible range, for example infrared detectors or measurement of light intensity. The idea is very simple - you build a big greenhouse, which is warmed by the Sun. In the middle of the greenhouse you put a very tall tower (source: Wikipedia).

The hot air from the greenhouse will rise up this tower, fast - and can drive turbines along the way. This could generate significant amounts of power, especially in countries where there is a lot of sunshine and a lot of room, such as Australia.

But just as we thought that solar energy is just mere generating power, not at all cases though. Photoluminescent products or glow in the dark products store light energy and release it later. They are sometimes called self-luminous and are useful source of emergency lighting in the event of a power failure.

With these, I see solar energy as free, needs no fuel and produces no pollution. Solar power can be used where there is no easy way to get electricity to a remote place. And most importantly, it will reduce your electricity and fuel bills dramatically. The only disadvantage I see here is that it does not work at night – of course. But as long as the sun always shines, keeps on shining, the future is bright of going green and getting what we deserve.