Posts Tagged: Smoke Stack

A glacier, known as the Trotting Glacier, melts more water in a day than NY City uses in a year and has receded 9 miles in 5 years. Proof can be found in the ice core records that provide CO2 and temperature levels as long ago as 650,000 years. Each puff from a smoke stack and output from a combustion engine makes a contribution to the seventy million tons of CO2 that humans pump into the atmosphere each twenty-four hours. Making an effort to significantly reduce our CO2 levels is the only hope for reducing its impact.

About one third of a family’s energy budget is used for heating water for normal use.

The utility companies supply the gas or electricity to heat the water for baths, showers, washing clothing, and many other things. But the resources utilized in providing electricity and gas are non-renewable, and as more natural resources are consumed they are increasingly more difficult to find. This puts the pinch on the average household customer that is finding power and water bills continuously going up at above inflation figures. This can only continue as carbon-based fuels get harder to find and extract. For almost 100 years, a solar panel has been used to successfully heat up water.

The easier method of solar energy use available today is water heating through solar electricity. It merely requires using the principle behind the sun’s thermal rays to heat up water.

The name of a solar panel is the batch collector systems and the flat plate collector. Flat plate collectors are just a chain of pipes that are positioned in an area of the home that receives direct sunlight (often a southern exposure and fitted to the roof). Water is passed through the pipes and is heated by the heat of the sun in contrast to any chemical chain reaction. The pipes are constructed so that they can absorb most of the sun’s heat.

A solar panel batch collector system is a water tank which has been modified to obtain the most from the sun’s energy. Surfaces of black that absorb thermal energy are included. Close to the home, and in an area that receives a lot of direct sunlight, is where the tank is located. The water given by either one of these systems can be used for the typical plumbing system of the home, where it can be used for regular uses like showers, dish washing and cooking. Buying and installing each system will cost a lot of money but the upkeep cost is low and the system will last anywhere from ten to twenty-five years.

It could take 5 to 7 years for you to recoup your money on purchase and installation, depending upon the amount of hot water you use and how effective your house is in storing hot water. You would also be contributing to the reduction of the amount of greenhouse gases that enter the atmosphere. Just to mention a few of the advantages and disadvantages of solar power.