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It doesn’t really matter what subject you talk about there are always people who are going to have different opinions.  Whether or not you should build your own wind turbine is one of those subjects.

There are thousands of people who have taken the plunge and built their own, there are also many people who think it’s a waste of time.

I don’t know the technical aspects of how a turbine works.  I do know that the energy of the wind is converted to electricity which is then used or stored in a battery for later use.

Turbines do come in sizes small enough for you to use in your own backyard.  They also come in different shapes even though the most common is the wind mill style.  You can build your own turbine in a couple of days for a few hundred dollars, all the parts you need can be found at your local hardware store. Many homeowners have had savings of up to 80% off of their electric bills.

The downside of building your own turbine is the upfront expense and the time.  It’s also important to note that while one turbine can help you save money on your utility bill, it won’t supply enough electricity for all of your household needs.  You will still need to pay for some electricity from your utility company.

Of course in order for your turbine to work you will need wind.  Since it’s not going to be windy every day there will be days when you won’t generate any electricity. In this case you could supplement the electricity from your turbine with solar panels, geo-thermal, or other forms of renewable energy, or just buy it from your utility company.

For most people the relatively small investment in a wind turbine is a good investment.  While it won’t be enough to get off the grid, it will give you some control over your utility costs as well as bragging rights to all of your friends.

Domestic, small scale, roof mounted wind turbines have a huge potential to contribute to localised electricity production, able to be installed on almost all varieties of roofs anywhere; although the degree of benefits associated will vary, depending on both the type chosen and location to which they are sited.

There are however a number of downsides to these small scale micro wind turbines, these are:

Vibration – As wind turbine consists of moving parts, this causes a degree of vibration to occur, which if mounted on the roof, is transmitted through to the building below, causing undue stresses.

build own wind turbine

Turbulence – Air passing over a building is distorted, resulting in cylindrical air movements. This interferes with the wind turbines normal operation resulting in increased stress and lower energy capture. This can be avoided however, if installed significantly above the roofline; however this is much more complicated and may negate any financial benefits. Or a sophisticated dampening system may be adopted, which separates the turbine from the building structure.

Safety – Turbines installed on roofs are a particular health and safety hazard, with higher risks associated due to their placement within close proximity to occupants.  Their fixings need to be strong enough to withstand high wind levels, and noise levels minimised.

Efficiency – The majority of residents currently live in built up urban locations, which are sheltered areas, and consequently experience high degree of intermittent wind speeds. The average wind speed in a town or city is generally a lot less than for the same turbine in a rural and open location.

Financially these turbines are not currently viable for the mass market, however with increased grants becoming available, this situation may be changing, and if the price is cheap enough, these issues mentioned above may not necessarily be a problem.

The cost effectiveness may be increased through clever use of energy storage from the turbines, such as an electric immersion heating element in a water tank may be used, reducing the impact of intermittent electricity production, and making it more viable a source to meet a home’s energy needs.

Although this article emphasises generally negative aspects of wind turbines, it needs to be appreciated, that presuming that are installed correctly, they can provide signficant cost savings, contributing significantly to Homeowners annual energy bill. More information found on Wind Turbines here.

A solar cell is a device which changes sunlight into electricity. A more technical term for a solar cell is a photovoltaic cell. The term “photo” derives from the Greek word for “light,” and the term “voltaic” comes from the word “volt” which means “electrical force.” A “cell” is a small receptacle or container containing electrodes which generate power. Thus, a photovoltaic cell is a container that creates electric force, through light. Whereas a solar cell can generate electricity from any light source, its intended use is the collection of solar energy from the sun.

How a Solar Cell Works

The solar cell works as follows: Photons (which are particles of light in sun rays) hit the surface of the solar cell and are absorbed a semiconductor, such as silicon. These photons (bits of sunlight) knock electrons loose from the atoms inside the semiconductor. The photons then push the electrons along, leaving a “gap” in the atom. Another electron is then pulled from an adjacent atom to fill the gap. And so an electrical flow is generated.

The simplicity of this is that one atom has an extra electron, and the other atom is missing one. This is referred to as a “difference in potential.” Nature, wanting to remain balanced, tries to even things out by pulling another electron from the neighboring atom. A solar panel is comprised of a group of solar cells which are linked together to produce the desired amount of electrical energy. A group of solar cells linked together can also be referred to as a “module.” Thus the terms “solar panel,” and “solar module,” are synonymous to each other, and essentially mean the exact same thing. “Solar panel” is the more common term, and “solar module” is the technical term.

solar panel

One can use solar panels individually or one can link several together in order to generate more electricity. When a group of solar panels are linked together, it is called a “solar array”. The more solar panels are included in a solar array, the more power they produce. Solar Power is a clean and virtually unlimited source of energy. I say “virtually unlimited” because the sun itself won’t last forever. But we won’t have to worry about that for the next few billion years. Since solar power is a clean energy source which has been around for decades, one might wonder why its not used more. The answer to this lies partially in the cost of producing solar panels, as well as in the efficiency of the solar panels.

We are currently in the second generation of solar panel technology and verging on the third. A lot has changed since the first generation. Solar panels a are becoming a viable source of clean energy. The solar cells of earlier times were relatively large and bulky compared to our current models. In view of the amount of energy and material required to produce them, and the amount of energy they actually produced, it was more costly to use solar energy than to use fossil fuels. The only exception was in places where little or no fossil fuels were available, such as in space.

With the second-generation solar cells, we attempted to tackle this exact problem. We attempted improve manufacturing techniques so as to reduce the costs, materials and energy needed for the production of solar cells. Recently, major advances have been made in the production of solar cells, which have reduced production costs. One contribution in this area was the development of techniques to coat glass or ceramic materials with very thin layers of semi-conductive substances. This made it possible to produce solar panels using only a fraction of the semi-conductive material that was required earlier.

Solar panel

The production of solar panels using this second-generation technology is referred to as “Thin Film Technology.” Third-generation solar energy technologies are currently being researched and developed. The objective is to improve the power of solar cells even further (while keeping production costs to a minimum) in which case thirty to sixty percent of the sunlight hitting the panels will be converted into electricity. (Currently, solar panels convert only about twenty percent.) But regardless of third generation solar technology, the second-generation solar cell is efficient enough to make solar technology viable – and a host of new solar-powered products have hit the consumer market.

Solar-powered calculators have been in use for a while now, we’ve all seen them. We have even seen a few other novelty devices. But only in the last few years have solar devices come into serious and practical use. The last two years in particular have seen a virtual explosion of solar devices hitting the market. Solar flashlights (I’ve often wandered what use they were), solar-powered radios, and, recently, solar battery chargers.

One can also now find a wide range of portable solar chargers and panels, which are lightweight and easy to transport, yet capable of providing a decent amount of power in even the most remote locations. Solar chargers are becoming a standard part of wilderness survival kits and emergency preparedness kits. All of this is a result of the developments in solar cell technology, and the coming of the Solar Age.

f you’re one of those people who every winter puts out 10,000 holiday lights or every summer keeps the air conditioning cold enough to make frozen treats on the kitchen counter – or whether you’re like everyone else who simply likes the modern convenience of electrical – then you should care about how we will generate electricity in the future.
We are in no danger of running out of coal, the primary fuel source for electricity generation in the US and many other parts of the world. And we could have as many new glowing nuclear power plants as we want. But the reality is that the pollution and safety impacts of these electricity-generating technologies forecast their necessary demise:
1) The problems with coal-fired power plants include sulfur (acid rain) and mercury pollution; coal-fired power plants are the biggest source of greenhouse gases in the world; and coal mining scars land and people alike.
2) Nuclear power plants are very clean in terms of emissions of typical pollutants, including carbon dioxide (the principal greenhouse gas), but the potential for accidents and terrorist strikes has most people doubting the wisdom of more nuclear power. And let’s not forget that we still don’t know what to do with the tons of long-term radioactive waste nuclear power plants produce.
So what does the future look like for electricity generation? We must start making major strides towards cleaner technologies like wind, solar, wave, and biomass. Today we talk about wind energy in an article that was adapted from materials made available by Lester Brown and the Earth Policy Institute.
People have been harnessing the power of the wind for centuries. The concept of wind energy is simple: the wind pushes against angled blades, causing them to move (much like the sail on a boat); the blades are attached to a hub and cause it to turn, which in turn can drive other components.
In olden days – back when wind-powered devices were called windmills – the turning motion of the hub was transferred to mechanical devices such as grist mills or groundwater pumps. graphic of wind turbines In a modern wind turbine, the hub drives an electrical generator and the output is electricity.
The modern wind turbine has come a long way in terms of sophistication, and the designs of today’s wind turbines are elegant and very efficient compared to wind turbines from even a decade or two ago. Designers have also solved some problems associated with early wind turbines, such as birds dying by flying into them. Additional advancements have been made in siting technology – wind turbines can also be sited off-shore now.
With wind-generated electricity, the principal production cost is the capital outlay for initial construction. Since wind is a free fuel, the only ongoing cost is for maintenance. Given the recent volatility of natural gas prices, the stability graph of wind power cost; shows cost has come down from 38 cents per kilowatt hour in 1982 to 4 cents per kilowatt hour in 2002 of wind power prices is particularly appealing. With the possibility of even higher costs of natural gas in the future, natural gas-fired plants may be used increasingly as backup for wind-generated electricity.
When the wind industry first began to develop in California in the early 1980s, wind-generated electricity cost 38 cents per kilowatt-hour. Since then it has dropped to 4 cents or less in prime wind sites. And some long-term supply contracts have been signed for 3 cents per kilowatt-hour. By 2020, many European wind farms will be generating electricity at 2 cents per kilowatt-hour, making it cheaper than all other sources of electricity.
Wind-generating capacity worldwide is growing at over 30% per year and has jumped from less than 5,000 megawatts in 1995 to 39,000 megawatts in 2003 – an increase of nearly eight-fold. The fossil fuel with the highest growth rate – natural gas – grew at just over 2% annually during the same period. Oil grew at less than 2% annually, and coal at less than 1%. Nuclear generating capacity expanded by 2% annually.
Wind is appealing for several reasons. It is abundant, cheap, inexhaustible, widely distributed, clean, and climate-benign – a set of attributes that no other energy source can match. When the US Department of Energy (DOE) released its first wind resource inventory in 1991, it pointed out that three wind-rich states – North Dakota, Kansas, and Texas – had enough harnessable wind energy to satisfy all of the nation’s electricity needs. Those who had previously thought of wind as a marginal potential source of energy obviously were surprised by this finding.
In retrospect, we now know that the 1991 data was a gross underestimate of the potential of this renewable energy source, because it was based on the technologies available in 1991. Advances in wind turbine design since then have enabled turbines to operate at lower wind speeds, to convert wind into electricity more efficiently, and to harness a much larger wind regime. Such advancement have perhaps tripled the amount of harvestable wind. Thus, while the DOE could say in 1991 that North Dakota, Kansas, and Texas had enough wind-energy potential to supply all national ELECTRICITY needs, we may now be able to say that they have enough harnessable wind energy to supply all national ENERGY needs. (See sidebar for more information.)
Once we get cheap electricity from wind, we have the option of electrolyzing water to produce hydrogen, which provides a way of both storing and efficiently transporting wind energy. At night, when the demand for electricity drops, the hydrogen generators can be turned on to build up reserves.
Once in storage, hydrogen can be used to fuel power plants, in much the same way that natural gas is used. This hydrogen can be used either as a backup for wind power or as an alternative to natural gas, especially if rising prices make natural gas prohibitively costly for electricity generation.
Hydrogen is also the fuel of choice for the fuel-cell engines that automakers worldwide are working on for our everyday vehicles. While hydrogen-powered vehicles may still seem far off in the future, if push comes to shove on the climate front – i.e. once it becomes more obvious that we must stop burning so much oil and pumping so much CO2 into the atmosphere – cars with gasoline-burning internal combustion engines could be converted to hydrogen.
Europe is leading the world into the age of wind energy, spurred in part by concerns about global warming. The record heat wave in Europe in August 2003 that scorched crops and claimed 35,000 lives has accelerated the replacement of climate-disrupting coal with clean energy sources.
The European Wind Energy Association projects that Europe’s wind-based electricity-generating capacity will nearly triple from 2003 to 2010. By 2020, wind-generated electricity is projected to satisfy graph of wind power capacity by country; shows a steady upward trend for all countries, with Germany leading, followed by Spain and the U S, then Denmark and India the residential needs of 195 million Europeans – half of the region’s population.
After developing most of its existing 28,400 megawatts of capacity on land, Europe is now tapping offshore wind resources as well. A 2004 assessment of Europe’s offshore wind-energy potential concluded that if Europe moves more aggressively to develop its vast offshore resources, wind could be supplying all of the region’s residential electricity by 2020.
Many countries in Europe are pushing hard to bring in more wind power. Here are a few examples.
1) The United Kingdom is requiring an investment of over $12 billion in off-shore wind farms that should satisfy the residential electricity needs of 10 million of the country’s 60 million people.
2) Tiny Denmark, which led Europe into the wind era with the development of its own wind resources, now gets an impressive 20 percent of its electricity from wind.
3) Germany overtook the United States in terms of wind-based generating capacity in 1997. Now Spain is close to overtaking the United States as well.
Europe’s leadership on wind energy has given it a major economic bonus: nine of the world’s ten leading wind turbine manufacturers are in three countries – enmark, Germany, and Spain. These happen to be the three countries that have had the strongest and most stable market incentives for developing wind energy.
In the US, wind power has grown 26% per year on average over the last 5 years, but the United States is lagging in the development of wind energy. This is not because we can’t compete technologically with Europe in manufacturing wind turbines, but because of a lack of leadership in Washington. The wind production tax credit of 1.5 cents per kilowatt-hour, which was adopted in 1992 to establish parity with fossil-fuel subsidies, has been permitted to lapse three times in the last five years, most recently at the end of 2003 when Congress failed to pass a new energy bill. Such uncertainties disrupt planning throughout the wind power industry.
The United States, with its advanced technology and wealth of wind resources, should be a leader in this field, but unfortunately it continues picture of wind farm to rely heavily on coal – a nineteenth century energy source – for much of its electricity at a time when European countries are replacing coal power with wind power.
Europe is not only leading the world into the wind age, it is also leading the world into the post-fossil fuel age – the age of renewable energy and climate stabilization. By demonstrating the potential for harnessing the energy in wind, Europe is unveiling the new energy economy for the rest of the world.
Lester Brown is founder and president of Earth Policy Institute. He has been described by the Washington Post as “one of the world’s most influential thinkers” and as “the guru of the global environmental movement” by The Telegraph of Calcutta. His most recent book is Plan B: Rescuing a Planet Under Stress and a Civilization in Trouble.
One final note about wind power. There are naysayers out there who claim that we would have to blanket the country with “wind-meels” to replace all our coal and nuclear plants. Don’t believe it. Remember that on a wind farm, the “footprint” of the operation – the turbine base plus the service roads – occupies only 5% of the land area. That makes wind power a perfect partner with open-space operations like farming and ranching.
And oh, by the way, our current electricity-generating technologies are blanketing the country with pollution!

The term Green Power encompasses many fields and as our planet’s natural resources are slowly running out, we must find alternatives to replace them. We must take into consideration the serious problem of greenhouse gases and global warming.There are many alternative sources of renewable energy and these are the future technologies that must be developed if we are to provide future generations with a healthy environment in which to live.

Solar power generation is one of the first to spring to mind, it is a totally clean and renewable source of free energy from the sun. It is used to generate electricity to power our homes, offices and factories and to heat water. New technology means wind power generation is gaining in popularity and besides the large scale wind farms, it can also be used for domestic purposes to power our homes as well.

Our Fuel resources are one of the main concerns that have to be dealt with in the future.One of the largest consumers of fuel is the automobile, the ordinary family car, and the trucks that ply our highways, plus a multitude of internal combustion engines used for many different purposes. Alternative fuel sources are constantly being developed, and the most promising seems to be biofuels, which are produced mainly from biomass products such as plant and vegetation matter. Some of these include corn and sugar cane among  others. They are relatively pollution free and extremely environmentally friendly.

Energy conservation also plays a large part, and means reducing the amount of energy used, either by actually using less energy or by reducing the consumption of energy services. Reducing the energy demand can offset the increased amounts of energy needed by a growing population. Energy conservation is often the most economical way to counteract energy shortages. It also enables replacing non-renewable energy resources with renewable ones, such as solar, wind, or hydro power. Further, it can help lessen climate change by lessening the amount of emissions in the atmosphere. It can help keep rising energy costs in check, and facilitate flexibility in the choice of which renewable resources to use instead of non-renewable ones. About half the energy usage in the US is by individual consumers specifically for transportation and residential use. Significant gains are being made in the reesidential area by consumers buying energy efficient vehicles and appliances.

There is a lot of talk these days about hybrid cars. Simply put, hybrid cars combine two-types of power, usuallly gasoline and electricity, in an attempt to increase vehicle efficiency and reduce the amount of gasoline used. Such a car is usually built as an electric car (electric motor and batteries), with a small (usually 10 – 20 horsepower) gas engine that powers a generator to basically serve as a charger for the car’s batteries. There are hybrid cars in almost any category of car you could want: Sedans, SUV’s, coupes, vans, and luxury cars all have hybrid models. With the advances in technology plus the fact that fuel prices are ever increasing has ensured more than ever, the savings that hybrid cars can offer are looking extremely attractive. If hybrid cars are compared to their petrol counterparts, hybrid cars generally attract a higher purchase price, but the whole of life cost of the hybrid technology car may mean you save significant dollars and also help the environment. At this stage nearly every major automobile manufacturer in the world has serious plans to release new models of hybrid cars. Read More

Green Power Easy, our site, our guides, and our concept are the brain child of Peter Lowe and his wife Jennifer. Peter and Jen have worked in the alternative energy business for close to 7 years. They earn there living helping others design Green Power solutions for their homes.

The Green Power Easy guides were created to fill a real need in the alternative energy marketplace: The need for a guide to go green with solar and wind power, that actually taught how to do it yourself.

With DIY guides turning up, Peter and Jen were suddenly inundated with questions from consumers looking for help implementing the solutions taught in those guides. The problem with the other guides out there was that, although some of them did a decent job teaching how to build a single solar panel, or a single wind turbine, none of them did well at teaching how to implement a whole-home conversion.

To help, Peter and Jen, set out to create a better guide. A better solution to teaching alternative energy, and most importantly to create the easiest-to-follow guide to building just one renewable energy source or to converting an entire home.

The Green Power Easy Guides are the result of hundreds of hours of research, hundreds of hours working with writers, editors, and designers to get it just right, and is the result of our passion for going green to save our planet.

We believe the result of this hard work is the Best Alternative Energy Guide on the market today. In this case you don’t need to take our word for it. We’re so confident that you’ll be satisfied with your purchase of our guide, we’re offering it with an eight-week, money-back, guarantee.

You can download your copy of the Green Power Easy guides, and if you aren’t completely satisfied with your purchase, we’ll refund your money – No Questions Asked! Our guide is EASY, our Guarantee Makes if EASY, and clicking the link below will ensure that your home conversion project goes as smoothly as possible, and it fact we make GREEN-POWER EASY!

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