There is right and wrong to start a diy solar project. The right way is to use this solar power calculator before you build your own solar panel system.

You need to know how much solar power you are going to need to generate before you start buying parts.

I put together this video of the solar power calculator over the weekend while my wife and daughter were out of town.

Enjoy!

Duration : 0:6:51

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I've got my monthly energy bill down big time and I did it without solar panels.  My energy bill is 25% less than the previous month. Here is how I did it.

Insulate Windows

Making sure that your windows insulate correctly is probably the single best thing you can do to lower your monthly energy bill.

If you have single pane windows your money is literally going out the window. Single pane windows are really bad insulators. Changing to double pane windows will save you a ton of money but they are expensive. You can put up heat sealing drapes in the summer and storm windows in the winter. This will save you a ton of money. You may want to take a room by room approach. The first room you should do this in is the family room.

Attic Ventilation

The next best thing you can do to save money each month involves attic ventilation. Attics need to vent air correctly this is why they usually have vents. If the vents get clogged with dust, your attic will get too hot during the summer. You should clean out the vents in your attic. If your attic does not have vents, you should consider having a few put in. You can go to your local hardware store and purchase attic ventilation kits.

Air Conditioner Filters

A dirty air filter makes your air conditioner work much harder which means it takes more energy to do its job. Changing your air conditioner filters once a month will save you money off your monthly energy bill.

Range Filter

The fan above your range uses a ton of energy. If the filter in your range hood is clogged with grease, the fan will work a lot harder to do its job and cost you a lot of money. You should change your range filter once every 3 months depending on how much you use it.

Turn Off Lights To Save Energy

You should lower the wattage of light bulbs you are using and turn off lights whenever possible. Every light bulb has a wattage rating. Ten 60-watt bulbs in recessed lighting in your ceiling turned on for 4 hours a day will cost you about $11 per month.

Never leave lights on at night. If you have just one 60-watt outside light that burns all night it is costing you about $10 per month.

Forget dimmer lights, they save you very little.

Fluorescent lights use much less power but they cost you more. However they last anywhere from 5 to 10 times longer and so that additional cost up front pays for itself over time. Fluorescent lights also have a reduced carbon footprint.

Appliances Power Usage

Use this solar power calculator to determine how many watts your major appliances use.

If you want to understand how the solar power calculate works or you want to calculate this manually you first need to estimate how many hours per day you use the appliance. You then use this formula:
Wattage ÷ 1,000 × hrs/day × $/kWh ÷ 30 days/month = total cost per month

A refrigerator uses 540 watts per hour. If your refrigerator runs for 125 hours a week, that's 125 hours ÷ 7 days = 17.9 hours per day. Here's what a month's worth of use costs you:
540 ÷ 1,000 × 17.9 × 0.15 × 30 = $43.50 per month

If you are using a central air conditioner (for 10 hours a day during the hot summer months) it's costing you:
4000 ÷ 1,000 × 10 × 0.15 × 30 = $180.00 per month

Technorati Tags: air conditioner, air conditioner filters, air filter, appliances power usage, attic ventilation, attics, drapes, energy, energy bill, insulate windows, insulators, light bulb, light bulbs, pane windows, range filter, range hood, save, solar panels, turn off lights to save energy, watt bulbs, wattage

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1. No More High Energy Bills And I Did It Without Solar Panels No More High Energy Bills And I Did It Without Solar Panels I've got my monthly energy bill down big time and I did it without solar panels.  My...

Big auto has been given billions in tax payer money over the years from the Department of Energy in the name of research to invent a clean car.

Big auto continues to try and get people not to buy electric car engines by claiming that electric cars are still years away from development, that they are slower than combustion engine cars, and that a hybrid car is the only thing that is possible today.

That is a lie. More and more people are taking matters into their own hands by purchasing a do it yourself electric car conversion kit. In the video below you will see what this average Joe has done. For a great electric car conversion kit, go to http://www.mysolarsecret.com/electric-car/

Not only have the big auto makers been lying to the people about the viability of electric cars, wasting billions of dollars of tax payers money in the name of “research” – but they continue to lobby

congress. The big auto makers spent nearly $50 million lobbying Congress this year and another $15 million in campaign contributions– all to get people not to buy electric car engines.

And now the big auto makers are going to Congress asking for billions of dollars of tax payers money while flying lavish private jets to Congress. How about if our tax paying dollars are used to bail out auto makers every American gets $2,000 off a new car? Yeah right.

In the video below watch the big auto markers getting caught riding private jets to Congress to ask for money.

Duration : 0:4:07

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The U.S. consumer buys a lot of oil from Nigeria. How much? Over 500,000 barrels per day. Nigeria is the 6th largest supplier of oil to the U.S.

When U.S. companies found oil in Nigeria, they told the Nigerian people how much better life was going to be for them with the millions of dollars flowing into their country from the sale of oil.

This was a lie told to the Nigerian people so that oil companies in the U.S. could profit. What most U.S. consumers don’t know is that their consumption of oil is killing Nigeria.

Worse, big oil executives have known what is happening to Nigeria because of the oil trade for years now, but still they continue to use their Washington lobbyists to delay solar power development.

The video you are about to see shows how the oil trade in Nigeria has enriched politicians both in the U.S. and Nigeria, as well as the big oil companies, while bringing suffering to ordinary people.

Gangs have formed in a kind of mini-civil war for who should control the oil.

Average peoples homes are demolished in order to create luxury housing for foreign oil workers and oil executives.

A pastor who has had his church demolished in the name of the oil trade laments, "The oil boom has turned into the oil doom."

A woman who has just had her home demolished, in the name of oil, clutches her young children and begs, "I need help. I need help."

Duration : 0:5:27

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Technorati Tags: nigeria, nigerian, nigerian people, oil boom, oil companies, solar power, washington lobbyists

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A future in which energy is produced without oil is a future that big oil is trying hard to prevent. Big oil is doing whatever it can to see that it continues to have a central role in providing Americans with energy in the future.

No other industry has influenced Presidents and their policies more than big oil.

America invented solar panels but now we are so far behind in green technology thanks to big oil putting George Bush in office, we may never take back our leading role.

Big oil continues to lie to the American people about the feasability of alternative energy projects and they continue to use their media contacts to portray that image.

While big oil is running ads on TV about how they are financing the development of clean energy alternatives for the future, behind the scenes they are doing everything they can to only develop clean energy alternatives that THEY can benefit from by selling to consumers. Take for example the fuel cell or the hydrogen car. These are solutions that are acceptable to big oil and big auto because they can completely control the means of production and distribution for profit. The fuel cell and the hydrogen car are ploys to delay the deployment of the electric car that takes only 8 parts to convert any existing car into an electric car for a price of about $3,000. The car is plugged in at night and costs about $9 a month to charge the battery bank. These are the kinds of solutions that big oil and auto do not want you to have.

The video you are about to see is of a solar power project in Spain that will be completed in 2010. A single 200 MW Solar Tower power station will provide enough electricity to power around 400,000 households. The energy output will represent an annual saving of more than 1,960,000 tonnes of greenhouse CO2 gases from entering the environment when compared to brown coal emissions in Victoria. The greenhouse savings equate to the removal of approximately 500,000 cars from the road.

Think about that. There are about 90 million homes in the U.S. It would take only about 225 of these solar power plants to produce all the electricity for every home in the country. So why aren't we building these now? The reason is that big oil has sponsored every single president in the last few years and big oil doesn't want these solar power plants because they can't profit from them. While big oil runs ads about how we need to break our dependency on foreign oil and how they are researching alternatives; while Bush and the republicans publicly talk about how we need to break our dependency on oil from the Middle East and how green energy is something we need to invest in-- privately both of these groups have worked together for the last 8 years to delay and prevent the kind of alternative energy projects that are taking place in other countries.

So how did big oil get so powerful? The answer involves a study of the oil barons in American history. You can Google that if you are interested. The big oil people who are in control and manipulate Presidents and the media like puppets today because of their vast financial resources are the same oil barons that did 100 years ago who passed down their wealth via inheritance (source Forbes.com):

Rockefeller, David Sr
Rockefeller, Laurance Spelman
Rockefeller, Winthrop Paul
Anschutz, Philip F
Davis, Marvin H
Koch, Charles De Ganahl
Koch, David Hamilton
Kaiser, George B
Bass, Robert Muse
Rowling, Robert
Hunt, Ray Lee
Marshall, E Pierce

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Critics of wind power have complained of the unsightly look of a wind turbine shooting up into the sky. Some homeowners associations have even banned wind turbines because of this. Some bird watch groups have complained that wind turbines are killing too many birds.

But what if there was a way around all this? What if you could squeeze a wind turbine down into a cube? Better, what if that cube could go on your roof top?

That’s exactly what this invention does.

This small simple looking invention has the potential to dramatically change the way households are powered. Just five of these wind turbines on a roof could produce enough electricity to run a household.

Graeme Attey, inventor, "We have a lot of wind in western Australia and currently we are not really using it in urban environments and there's a good opportunity to make use of it."

Unlike other wind turbines Graeme Attey's invention is solid and needs very little wind to operate. He hopes that a $34,000 state government grant will get his proto-type to production stage. He estimates that they will cost consumers about $700 each.

Grame Attey, "When the wind is up and it's over supplying, that can be fed back to the grid so that you can actually be generating power instead of using it."

Alan Carpenter, Premier, "This is potentially so cheap compared to other renewable energy generators."

Wind sensors are being installed on roofs to determine where the turbines work best.

Jonathan Whale, Murdoch University, "The advantages of a roof top is that it can concentrate the air flow around and over the top of the building and actually increase that wind speed."

The state government says it will look at incentives for homeowners to install the devices.

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A builder has found a way to beat the house slump. This is a new development in Sacramento California that features some very green homes.

For every $1 that you can save annually, it adds $20 in value to your house. Falling Leaf at Riverbend is selling solar power and people are buying even in a down real estate market.

Here you get a tankless water heater instead of an old power guzzling tube. What it does is that it heats water on demand as the water passes through a coil. It will do 6.9 gallons per minute which is enough to run three showers and a dishwasher at the same time.

Each home is fitted with a 2 kilowatt solar power system and what isn't used is sold to the local power utility company.

Inside air conditioning vents are moved to the middle of rooms for better efficiency and the zero energy designation is good for a $2,000 tax credit.

With a solar powered home you get two meters, one records the electricity being used while the other keeps track of the solar power being generated. Some homeowners have generated so much solar their electricity bills have been less than $10 per month.

Earlier this month when the valley baked in triple digit heat residents here stayed cool without worry. Pete Desmond moved in April 1st and the savings is no joke. "The bill I just got, and we've had the air conditioner running constantly, was $34."

Duration : 0:2:16

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I wish to build a solar panel for use at home. I am what to build something that will power a computer, fan, TV, and refrigerator. How do I do this and what costs will be involved?

The first thing you need to do is to use the solar power calculator on this site to calculate how many solar panels you will need to build to power the things you want. To use the calculator look in the left sidebar of this site or just go to Solar Power Calculator

Once you put everything in, the solar power calculator will tell you how many solar panels you will need to build and what the cost will be down at the very bottom of the page.

Next check out these instructions for how to build your own solar power system here: Build Your Own Solar Power System

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Solar walls or solar thermal walls are being built at Fort Drum in upstate New York. The solar walls will provide 4 Megawatts of peak thermal energy.

Over 50 solar wall systems are being installed on 27 military buildings.

By using the free energy of the sun instead of burning fossil fuels for heating purposes, the base will save over 2,000 tons of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere each year.

A solar wall heating system heats the ventilation air that is required in commercial and industrial buildings using a patented transpired solar collector. Because hot air rises, a fan sits at the top of the solar wall which directs the heated air into the ventilation system. Ventilation heating is typically one of the largest single energy requirements for these types of buildings, which is why solar air heating can generate such significant overall energy reductions.

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For a class project, I have to come up with an experiment using solar power. I'm thinking about connecting a solar panel (low volts) to the motor of a very small plastic hand-held fan. Does anyone know where I can buy a solar panel to accomplish such a thing?

You do not want low volts, you want low amps. The small fan you are talking about still needs to be plugged into a 12 volt outlet, I have one in my bedroom. The solar panel you want costs about $20. You can check it out on Amazon by going to Sunforce 50012 1.8 Watt Solar Battery Maintainer

You wire this solar panel to a controller, the controller to a single battery that you are charging, from the battery to an inverter which converts the DC current into AC, and then you plug the fan into the inverter.

I sense an A+ coming your way.

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