Why is it that when ever our government leaders talk about solar home power they seem to always be referring to a new national grid system powered by huge public works projects, like wind farms? Are they that far behind the times, or is it that they just don’t want to let the public know the real truth about solar power homes?

The truth, is that for the vast majority of buildings across the planet there is more than enough sunlight hitting their roofs to supply them with all the solar home power they need. All it takes, is for people just like yourself to take the money that you’ve been spending on utility bills, and use it instead to install solar panels for home use to harness it.

Your Initial Steps Towards Solar Home Power

• The very first thing you need to do is to research all the government solar home financial incentives that are available in your area. Now there is a fairly hefty federal tax rebate deal in the U.S., but for the most part, most local solar home incentives tend to be rather tight fisted. (Permit fee waivers, etc.) Just the same, solar home power incentives can add up collectively to real savings that has the potential to quickly add up to thousands of dollars. Also if you live in a county like Sonoma County County, California where the politicians aren’t in the pockets of utility providers, the solar panels for home use incentives can make conversion to a solar home incredibly easy. Now get ready though because while you won’t have to slash your way through a mountain of red tape, they’re terms none the less can be a little on the complicated side. Even so, once you start reading up on what’s available, and start doing the math it will most likely have a direct impact on your solar home power plans.

More Options in Solar Panels for Home Conversion Projects

• Keep an open mind and definitely think out of the box. If you’re like most people for instance, the first item you’re going to gravitate to is standard solar panels for home use. Now this is good because the odds are that you will end up with at least one on your building. But what about solar roof tiles for instance? The fact is that they’ve gone through several advancements that have made them the new shining star of the solar panels for home use products industry. For instance there are now even curved “Spanish style” solar tiles. They’re also more cost effective now as well. Then what about a solar water heating system? For sure if you have a swimming pool, and are currently heating it with a conventional system, something like this should be way up towards the top of your list.

Used Solar Panels for Home Conversion

• What about “used” solar panels for home power conversion? You see, as more people convert to a solar home, increasingly more used panels are created. Some folks just don’t have a lot of room, so they require maximum solar home power from their panels. As soon as they pass their peak performance level, they replace them. What this means is that right now there are used solar panels for home use out there that still have 5 to 8 good years left in them that you can pick up at a discount, and in some cases even for free. After all, after a few years of service your solar home system really is made up of a bunch of used parts anyway.

Solar Power Homes on a Limited Budget

• Don’t make the mistake of thinking that you need a big budget to get started on a solar home. There are loads of “quick fit” solar power home products that you can buy, and install on smaller projects as the money comes available, and it can start with something as basic as a solar outdoor lighting kit. Or, what about a solar power attic fan and while you’re at it, what about blowing some extra insulation up there as well? Then there solar home products like sun powered ceiling fan kits with fan assemblies that cost no more than standard fans. Remember that every dollar invested in solar panels for home use, is just one more dollar you don’t hand over to a utility company.

• Go online and network with other people who have already made the solar home power conversion. You see, there’s no doubt that there will be lessons to be learned along the way. The question is though, do you want to learn them the easy way or the hard way? There are some real clever people out there who have a lot to share, and don’t forget that people have been improvising systems together for their solar power homes for decades now. Join an online solar home forum, or better, yet join a few of them. Another thing you can do while your at it, is to become more more politically active for the the “solar home power” cause. It really is pathetic how our elected officials on both the national, and local level do so little to promote real incentives for their constituents to convert to a solar home.

• Take control of your power usage

• Learn what each appliance is costing you

• Cut your power bill by 25% your first month

The electricity monitor has been available in it’s various forms for saving energy at home for some time now. Even so, it’s taken a long time to gain wide public acceptance even in spite of it’s relatively low price, and ease of operation.

The main problem, is that when it comes to devices for saving money at home, the electricity monitor really wasn’t what folks in general have had in mind. You see, what most folks have really been hoping for all along, was new technologies that in and of themselves would cut power usage. Not measure it.

After all, if you stop to think about it for a moment, you have to ask yourself how on earth can any device that simply tells you how much power you’re using save you any money? Something so simple in concept and operation that you just clamp it around the main feed wire at your power box?

Do You Really Need to Know What it’s All Costing You???

The simple answer to both these questions, is that an electricity monitor doesn’t save you any money. As stated above, it only measures it. However; the “proven fact”, is that statistically people who buy them and use them, cut their power bills by about 25% on average within their first month.

Sound a bit hard to believe that saving energy at home can be as easy as simply measuring it as it’s being used? Well once you think about it, it all makes perfect sense, but first stop and ask yourself if you would feel comfortable owning and driving a car that didn’t have a fuel gauge, or a speedometer. Or; how about ordering at a restaurant that didn’t have prices posted on their menu?

So the concept of tracking the cost of things as you consume them isn’t unusual at all because you do it every day as you go about your life. In fact if you take a moment to think about it, given the amount of money that folks spend on electricity, what should be a surprise is that the electricity monitor has been so long in coming.

Are Your Home Appliances Really Shut Off ??

For instance, are you aware that your television set may be using up to 75% of the power that it consumes while it’s turned off!? You read that correctly. While your TV is sitting in the off mode, it is still in fact active and consuming electricity, and by the way there is a new device to put an end to that.

It’s a clever hand held remote that turns the “actual electricity” for your TV on and off at the power source when you use it, but that and other clever devices are material for another article. Right now I’m writing about the electricity monitor.

It comes as two separate components that work together for saving energy at home. One device simply clamps around the main power line at the power box and the other device sits in your home, and receives signals from the unit out at the box. That’s it!

How Much is Each Appliance Costing You Today ??

However; it’s what the electricity monitor does with the information that it receives that’s so useful. For starters it can measure the energy usage for your entire home or it can measure how much any given appliance uses on an individual basis. Does that sound interesting?

Then with that information, with the simple click of a button it can convert that actual “usage figure” into a real “monetary figure”. That is how much it’s costing you in several international denominations. (dollars, pounds, etc.) But wait because it gets even better than that.

That’s because with just one days measurement and cost figure, it can extrapolate it out to show you what your cost will be in a week, a month or a year. Want to know how much your old refrigerator is costing you this week, month, or year, and compare it to the cost of buying a new one for instance? No problem!

Then with the software that comes with your energy monitor you can connect it up to your computer, so you can check your power usage figures online from anywhere on the planet, and even join an online community. So what kind of community?

A Whole Online Community of Cost Cutting Fanatics

A community of energy saving fanatics that share tips and information. What kind of information? How about being able to access each others actual power usage figures while challenging one another in contests to find new methods for saving energy at home? Sound interesting?

Well it’s going on right now and once you get into it you’ll quickly discover how with a simple device that costs you as little as $50 US you can slash your electrical bill in half and at the same time become a heck of a lot more knowledgeable about power usage in general.

• Can you really build a usable homemade wind turbine for $200?
• How much power will it produce?
• What are some engineering problems you will encounter?

If your property will support a homemade wind turbine then you really need to start narrowing in your focus on making one. You see even if it’s a small unit that puts out very little actual power, the experience you will gain from making it you can put to use further down the road. Hey! The cost of gas and electricity is only going up.

Now perhaps you may have already noticed that DIY articles on how to build your own homemade wind turbine are pretty much a dime a dozen online. It seems that just about everyone wants to hold themselves out as an expert these days but I see just glaring problem and that is that they all seem to make it all look just a bit “too easy”.

For instance, the first thing you need to be aware of is that it takes a “good amount” of steady wind to power a homemade wind turbine and a good “breeze” just won’t cut it. As an example, perhaps you may have noticed that commercial wind-farms are located in high wind areas and even now offshore.

Another thing to take into consideration that the vast majority of DIY wind turbine information products fail to mention is that water can ruin your homemade wind turbine real quickly. So what this means, is that if you live in a “wet climate area”, that’s just one more thing that’s not in your favor.

Also if you’ve seen any of the articles that proclaim to show you how to build a homemade wind turbine for $200 or less, don’t believe it. For one thing good motors that will function as generators (if you want to use a motor) are getting harder to find and then there’s the problem of your propeller.

Now if you have seen any of the articles that explain how to cut propeller blades out of a hunk of plastic pipe do keep in mind that propellers made this way are highly inefficient. Consider looking online for an actual low cost wind propeller that will make full use of the wind you have available.

A good quality propeller that’s designed and built for powering a wind generator will deliver maximum performance and it’s that extra level of performance that can make the difference between a homemade wind turbine that actually makes electricity for you on low wind speed days.

At the same time keep in mind that the larger your propeller the greater the amount of stress on your support structure. Now a small propeller spinning like a “bat outa hell” is really no problem but once you move to a larger propeller, vibration, and stress do become an issue.

Perhaps you may have driven past a commercial wind farm and wondered to yourself why the huge propellers on the generators seem to be turning so slowly. Well now you know why they use gears to spin the generator at a high RPM while the larger blades spin at safe low speed.

Still yet another item to address, is the tower that your homemade wind turbine is going to be mounted on. Now if you plan on building a small light generator to simply to have some fun with then you can easily get by with the flimsy tower made from water pipe and guy-wires that you may have already seen in the DIY articles online.

Something like that will work great for powering a couple of lights or a small laptop but if you plan on building a larger scale unit to provide a usable amount of power for your home, you’ll need something different. You’ll for sure need a taller, more heavy duty tower.

There are some great information products online that deal strictly with buying, and building towers for a homemade wind turbine and the monetary figure that most of them hold out, is that 50% of your total cost will be for your tower alone. Even so this isn’t chiseled in stone.

For instance I read a fantastic article on the topic that showed pictures and explained how a group of people cut a tall pine tree to fashion a tower out of in the forest area that they were working in. A highly effective solution, using what they had at hand.

The Bottom Line on Building a Homemade Wind Turbine

• A $200 unit spinning a motor that’s small enough to fit in the palm of your hand is going to generate minimal power.

• Electrical components exposed to open weather in a wet climate will quickly deteriorate.

• A large well designed and balanced propeller is needed to drive a generator capable of producing a sizable quantity of power, but it must be geared down to prevent vibration problems.

• A homemade wind turbine large enough to produce a usable amount of electricity requires a tall, secure, well built tower.

• What are the pros and cons?

Pretty much everything about the tankless water heater or what some people also refer to as the on demand water heater is a surprise, and complete breakaway from a conventional standing unit. They’re also the perfect “rainy day backup unit” for solar water heating systems.

Now the first big surprise for most people, is their size and weight because for some reason the standard assumption is that a much larger piece of heavier equipment is needed to heat large quantities of water so quickly. The tankless water heater is incredibly compact and light.

The On Demand Water Heater is Compact and Light

In fact the larger on demand water heater models that are designed to replace a standard 40 gallon conventional unit weigh in between 20 to 30 pounds on average. These larger units are also about the size of a small compact television set. Usually in the area of fifteen by fifteen inches, or so.

So the next surprise is how easy they are to install and hook up because they simply bolt to the wall through the back-plate and electric models basically just plug right into a wall socket. With a simple “cold water in” inlet and “hot water out” outlet, connecting up the lines is also a snap.

Incredibly Efficient use of Water Heating Power!!

Another big surprise is how efficiently they use power. For instance the gas powered tankless water heater doesn’t even need to be vented out of the home because there is just “no wasted heat” to be vented out. Now there is a top exhaust vent but you can hold your hand over it when the unit is running and will only feel “a bit warm”.

Another big surprise is how much scalding hot water they will put out, and do so continuously. Be aware though that a larger gas fired on demand water heater does gulp quite a bit of gas when running on maximum output, so you have to make sure that the gas lines in your home have the capacity to provide it in large amounts.

Two Downsides to the Tankless Water Heater


So then what are some of the downsides of the tankless water heater because there always seems to be pros and cons with every new innovation? The simple answer to that question is there are two, and the first one is cost.

Generally speaking, an on demand water heater of such a size and capacity that it can replace your current 40 gallon standing unit, is going to cost you about twice as much on average. Also be aware that they also tend to be more vulnerable to complications caused by mineral buildup from heavy water.

• What renewable energy jobs are opening the fastest?

• What can you do to position yourself at the front of the line?

Rarely if ever has a business genre received the level of exposure that renewable energy jobs have in recent years. Then again, there just has never been an industry that is poised to have the overall effect on entire societies, and economies in the way that renewable energy is today.

Current estimates have the renewable energy business sector on track to add tens of thousands of new alternative energy jobs in the UK, U.S., and Canada in the coming years. Even new job titles that in many cases most people have never even heard of before. Well paying renewable energy jobs that will be here to stay.

So no matter if you are a recent graduate on the lookout for a lucrative career opportunity, or someone who is motivated by a noble desire to join in and take a place in the greater ecological movement, there is work for you.

Right now wind energy is experiencing the fastest growth of any renewable energy jobs sector on the planet. In fact the U.S. has seen development of this energy source increase some 21% since 2007. So what about future growth in this exciting new arena?

Would you believe that it’s projected that by 2030 wind energy will account for a full 20% of all the energy produced in the United States? For the UK the prospects appear even brighter, due to more proactive government support measures for wind power.

The nice thing about this business genre, is that it requires renewable energy jobs to build the wind farms, and than there are alternative energy jobs that relate to the ongoing maintenance of the machinery, and infrastructure. So the bottom line is that wind energy jobs are here to stay, once the farms are established.

Now if your local utility company owns a wind farm in your area, chances are that the job of maintaining it is contracted out to a firm that isn’t in your area. In fact the truth is that most wind energy jobs that relate to wind farm maintenance require that you travel.

The good news though is that a high percentage of these types of renewable energy jobs don’t require an advanced college degree. Rather, the vast majority of workers tend to be technicians who have undergone some form of specialized training, or have work experience in fields like electronics, fiberglass repair, or mechanics.

Then there are offshore wind farms, and don’t forget that offshore work always pays more money. In fact if offshore wind farm work is anything like offshore oil platform work, you end up getting paid 24 hours a day, and that even includes the time that you’re sleeping.

So then what are some of the steps that you can take to get yourself pointed in direction of one of these renewable energy jobs? Yes they are available now, but due to the lagging economy, and the fact that the industry as a whole has yet to take off, you can expect to encounter some level of competition.

In the mean time one of your best options for building your resume’ is in the offshore oil industry. Sound crazy? Well then keep on reading because by the time you’re through, you’ll understand why getting a job on an oil platform may be your best step towards renewable energy jobs.

First of all, you need to discover if you’re really cut out for a job that has you isolated for days on end, working up high in dangerous conditions. Now wouldn’t it be a shame to go through some type of extensive training, only to find out that wind energy jobs on isolated wind farms were intolerable?

In fact for many people these types of jobs are, and they end up quitting within their first year which brings us to the second reason. That is that entry level offshore jobs in the oil industry are easy to find, and land. In short, if you’re healthy, able bodied, and can pass a drug test, there’s someone looking for you right now.

Thirdly, you don’t need advanced training for offshore platform work. They’ll start you off on rudimentary tasks right out of high school if that’s your case then work you up, and even pay for advanced career training in areas like mechanics, electronics, and hydraulics.

Lastly, your odds of landing one of the wind farm related renewable energy jobs are always better if you’re already employed, and what better place to be employed than in the energy industry. When a prospective employer sees that you’re working on an offshore platform, they’ll know that you have what it takes for wind energy jobs on a secluded wind farm.