Vazdot Blog -Solar Power House

I was wondering is solar water heating a more cost efficient use of solar power over using large arrays to power your house or large solar thermal plants that are being contemplated all over the world.

It depends on how you do it. Passive solar is the most efficient and reliable. The more pumps, storage tanks and controllers you use the less efficient and reliable the system will be. The egyptians were successfully using passive solar 3,000 years ago and it still works the same.

A full scale zero carbon, solar powered house, designed and built by students at The University of Nottingham has been unveiled at the worlds biggest event for sustainable design, construction and the built environment.

The prototype home, built with the low carbon agenda and mass market in mind, went on display for the very first time at Ecobuild — which takes place at Earls Court between March 2 to March 4 2010. Among the visitors to the house on opening day was Housing Minister John Healey.

The Nottingham H.O.U.S.E (a family home optimising the use of solar energy) is the result of months of planning, design and construction work by a 40 strong team of students from the Department of the Built Environment.

Duration : 0:3:51

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Technorati Tags: architecture, Eco Build, Education, Mark Gillott, Nottingham House, Solar Decathlon

I mean how much sun do you need? And, does it work on overcast day’s? And, I figure you probably wouldn’t have any energy during the snowy season. Also, do most people that use solar for their house’s only energize certain lower demanding things?

If you are getting direct sunlight, it shouldn’t matter if it is the snowy season or not.

There are ways to build solar panels that only power a couple of things, or other systems that can power your whole house.

I built one panel of my own just to see how well it would work and I am powering a couple of lamps and a TV from it.

Check out the plans I used here

http://energyfromhome.com/link.html

deep house fantasies vol. 2 .

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Technorati Tags: deep, house

I am looking into putting a solar panel on my house, but i always get mixed up with which way the sun rises and sets in this country. What side of the house should the solar panel be put on?
Sorry, Im in England. Such a doofus sometimes.

No matter where you are on earth, the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. In the norther hemisphere the sun tracks more to the south that is why positions of panels and windows to the south take advantage of the sun the best.

You need to consider not only the direction but the tilt of the solar panels too in order to get maximum efficiency.
I have included sole links about solar position and positioning solar panels. Hope it helps.

then used to heat the house on cloudy days. Suppose that 2.4×10^8 J of heat are needed to maintain the inside of the house at 21°C. how many barrels ( 1 BARREL= 0.16 M^3) OF WATER are needed?
What does the E stand for
edwards what is E

We have to determine the heat capacity of one barrel and divide the total heat required [ 2.4E+8J ]over that number.
The heat capacity per barrel is
Q(barrel)= m Cp (T2-T1)
Q(barrel)= pV Cp (T2-T1) since Cp=4181.3 kJ/kg K

Q(barrel)= 1E+3 x 0.16 4181.3 (38 – 21)=
Q(barrel)= 11 E+6 J

Number of barrels= 2.4E+8/11.4 E+6 = 21 barrels

There’s a bi-annual international competition sponsored by the U.S. Dept. of Energy and the Renewable Energy Laboratory. It’s called the Solar Decathlon and it promotes the use of solar power by inviting teams of architecture students to design, build and operate energy efficient solar powered houses. Carol Pack reports on a house built right here on Long Island by the New York Institute of Technology.

Duration : 0:6:34

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Technorati Tags: Carol, decathlon, Institute, Island, LI, Long, New, News, NYIT, of, Pack, reporting, solar, technology, Tonight, York

I would like to know the average cost of solar panels and if the government is offering any kind of help to people who wish to install them on a new constructed house? Any website I should look at? I would like to run 50% of my house on solar panels. Would this be cost productive and how much space would be needed? Any and all Information would be very help full.

Here are some sites I’ve found. I’m going to research them in depth later perhaps for my own house. Best of luck to you.

I searched google with the phrase "government grants for solar power".

http://www.ehow.com/how_2310470_other-alternative-sources-renewable-energy.html

http://www.ecobusinesslinks.com/financial_incentives_solar_energy_panels.htm

http://solar.rain-barrel.net/solar-power-grants/

This video shows how well an energy efficient home can work with nothing but the suns energy. No heat is installed and the house has not dropped below freezing, even when the temps went down to -4.5F and no sun the house only went down to 41.9F

Duration : 0:8:22

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Technorati Tags: energy efficient home, geothermal heating, passive solar, passive solar home, solar-energy, trombe wall, water filled windows

we are working on a solar house project. we have bought 2 acres of land in southeast new york and we need to know how much sunlight we would need in order to power the solar house. the house is going to be about 1500sq.ft. i know its small but its just a starter house.

For photovoltaic, check the map here: http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/old_data/nsrdb/redbook/atlas/ . Looks like NY gets 4-5 equivalent peak hours of sunlight a day, probably closer to 4. But your site is fixed; you’ve already bought the land, right?

I noticed you mentioned "starter" house. There will be nothing starter about the price making a fully solar house in New York. The array you would need for electricity would be twice the size of what would be needed in Arizona. And if you plans are to heat the house by solar also, that’s not impossible with 2 acres, but the array would be huge, and dwarf the size of the house. The idea would be to heat enormous quantities of water and store that underground to keep the house warm. Even in winter, you can heat water, but would need a more expensive type of technology, evacuated tubes, since New York will get hard freezes.

You would probably want to build the house underground as much as possible, and super-insulate everything. You would also want very energy-efficient appliances and lighting, which would also raise the price from what is considered a "starter" home.

If there’s any chance you can move the location of the house to a warmer climate, things will get much easier.