These are challenging times economically and one way that an increasing number of people are meeting the challenge is to reduce their dependence on expensive energy. As well as the economic cost advantage there are also the environmental benefits of powering your home with renewable energy. Solar power for your home can enable you to live a cheaper and more environmentally friendly lifestyle.
Many people think that the cost of transforming their home to use solar is prohibitively expensive. It can cost more than $30,000 to have a professional company to install solar power for your home.
For that amount of money it will be a long time before you begin to see a return on your investment. However solar powering your home will significantly increase its market value when and if you decide to sell it. But why pay such a large sum of money when there are DIY solar solutions that you can build yourself for a tiny fraction of the cost. How does $100 to create a solar panel sound to you? It doesn’t take any special DIY skills either. At such a small cost you will begin to see a return on your investment almost immediately.
All you really need to get started is a well written guide such as Earth 4 Energy. This is a 90 page instruction manual with accompanying videos that will teach you how to build your own solar panels and install them in your own home. The solar panels that it will teach you to make are capable of each producing up to 120 watts. These panels can then be joined with other panels to produce over 1KW of electricity.
Whether you are able to go off grid completely and rely entirely on solar power will depend on whereabouts you live. If there isn’t much sunshine where you live then you won’t be able to rely entirely on solar power for your home energy. But you will still be able to significantly reduce the cost of your electricity bills. The Earth 4 Energy manual will also show you how to make your own wind turbine as a backup to your solar power during cloudy days.
There are several solar power for your home solutions:
Solar cooker: This is a food cooking appliance that uses absolutely no fuel to cook you and your family meals. They can be used to roast, boil and bake meals. Their only disadvantage is the time it takes to cook. But it’s free!
Solar lighting: A solar home lighting system will charge up solar cells during the day so that there is energy available during the night to light your home for free.
Solar heating: A solar heating system is probably the biggest cost saver and will significantly reduce your electricity bill. A solar heating system will provide you with a heated home as well as hot water.
