Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Ideas For Energy Efficient Home
Obviously it would be cool if everyone could run their homes off of wind and solar power. However, both of these technologies are expensive to get into and it takes years to come out ahead. You might just break even if you loaned the money and had to pay interest. But, here are some affordable ideas I intend to investigate when I someday build my own home.
If you haven't noticed lately, LED lights are making a huge dent in the illumination market place. They're cheap and efficient, even more than fluorescents. The problem is they run on lower voltages, so a converter would be needed at every light socket and these converters are not always very small. I read somewhere an opinion that houses should be wired for both 110 VAC and 12 VDC to allow easier use of money saving LED's. In otherwords there would be one transformer that fed all the LED's in the house. But, I thought it would be cool to take that one step further.
Generating 12 volts from wind and solar is CHEAP. So, if you had your house wired with 12 volts to operate all your LED lights, it would be very easy to create a battery system in parrallel with the transformer feeding the line. So you would run on batteries most of the time and if by chance you used them up, the hard wired converter would kick in and feed the 12 volts from the outside 11o. Now, these batteries would be charged via solar and wind power. I have seen some solar panels online costing $100-$200 that claim they charge a battery in a few hours on a sunny day. Wind mills are being sold anywhere from $500 to $2500. But, they generate a lot more power, day or night... if the wind is blowing over 8mph in most cases. If you have a stream by your house perhaps you could just hook a car's alternator up to a water wheel. That would run all the time.
So, think about it. How much cheaper would your electric bill be if your lighting was free. One website I reseached had a windmill that powered his cabin and if the batteries were fully charged he used the extra energy to power a heater automatically. So this could even help your natural gas bill. In his case he just didn't need to burn as much wood. :)
OK, what about electricty used by other things in your house? Most gadgets in your house run on 12 VDC or less. Inside they have a transformer that converts 110 VAC to whatever it needs. In a perfect world the makers of these gadgets would allow you to side step the transformer and use your 12 volt source directly. You could modify your equipment, but that is dangerous and could prove expensive. Easier though would be gadgets that use that big black cubed over sized plugin. Inside that black plastic is the transformer. If you read the specifications written on it, it will tell you it's output. A lot, but not all, of them are 12 volts. These electronic devices could be plugged directly into your system. Anything made to plug into a car's cigarette lighter would work.
Some things you won't be able to run on 12 VDC though. These include the high demanding housewares such as laundry, stove, refrigerator, air conditioning, etc. So, it may be impossible to totally eliminate outside power sources (cheaply). They do make 12 VDC to 110 VAC converters, but when used by a power hungry TV, it will drain a car battery in a couple of hours.
Another idea I have played with is the use of solar ovens. There are several websites that describe using old satelite dishes (the big ones, 6 feet in diameter or more) to make solar ovens. A simple way is to get one, coat it in tinfoil, and point it at the sun. On a sunny day you can boil water in about the same time you can on a stove. So it is cool to think about using such a system to help heat your home with some kind of heat exchange. It could also be used to cool your home! I was amazed last year to find my brother's frig in his camper ran on propane. They're called gas refrigerators. Unlike your typical refrigerator that uses freon and a mechanical pump, these use ammonia and generate the needed pressure with heat. This system could be used with our solar oven. The concentrated rays from the sun could be used to heat the sytem instead of propane. Not sure how efficient this would be, but it is interesting to think about a way to use the sun to cool.
There are also several experiments ongoing in making energy efficient homes. One guy who built his idea of an energy efficient house had to install an air exchange system because the house was so air tight it would get low on oxygen. :) Pair something with that with my LED plans and you have a cheap energy bill.
If you haven't noticed lately, LED lights are making a huge dent in the illumination market place. They're cheap and efficient, even more than fluorescents. The problem is they run on lower voltages, so a converter would be needed at every light socket and these converters are not always very small. I read somewhere an opinion that houses should be wired for both 110 VAC and 12 VDC to allow easier use of money saving LED's. In otherwords there would be one transformer that fed all the LED's in the house. But, I thought it would be cool to take that one step further.
Generating 12 volts from wind and solar is CHEAP. So, if you had your house wired with 12 volts to operate all your LED lights, it would be very easy to create a battery system in parrallel with the transformer feeding the line. So you would run on batteries most of the time and if by chance you used them up, the hard wired converter would kick in and feed the 12 volts from the outside 11o. Now, these batteries would be charged via solar and wind power. I have seen some solar panels online costing $100-$200 that claim they charge a battery in a few hours on a sunny day. Wind mills are being sold anywhere from $500 to $2500. But, they generate a lot more power, day or night... if the wind is blowing over 8mph in most cases. If you have a stream by your house perhaps you could just hook a car's alternator up to a water wheel. That would run all the time.
So, think about it. How much cheaper would your electric bill be if your lighting was free. One website I reseached had a windmill that powered his cabin and if the batteries were fully charged he used the extra energy to power a heater automatically. So this could even help your natural gas bill. In his case he just didn't need to burn as much wood. :)
OK, what about electricty used by other things in your house? Most gadgets in your house run on 12 VDC or less. Inside they have a transformer that converts 110 VAC to whatever it needs. In a perfect world the makers of these gadgets would allow you to side step the transformer and use your 12 volt source directly. You could modify your equipment, but that is dangerous and could prove expensive. Easier though would be gadgets that use that big black cubed over sized plugin. Inside that black plastic is the transformer. If you read the specifications written on it, it will tell you it's output. A lot, but not all, of them are 12 volts. These electronic devices could be plugged directly into your system. Anything made to plug into a car's cigarette lighter would work.
Some things you won't be able to run on 12 VDC though. These include the high demanding housewares such as laundry, stove, refrigerator, air conditioning, etc. So, it may be impossible to totally eliminate outside power sources (cheaply). They do make 12 VDC to 110 VAC converters, but when used by a power hungry TV, it will drain a car battery in a couple of hours.
Another idea I have played with is the use of solar ovens. There are several websites that describe using old satelite dishes (the big ones, 6 feet in diameter or more) to make solar ovens. A simple way is to get one, coat it in tinfoil, and point it at the sun. On a sunny day you can boil water in about the same time you can on a stove. So it is cool to think about using such a system to help heat your home with some kind of heat exchange. It could also be used to cool your home! I was amazed last year to find my brother's frig in his camper ran on propane. They're called gas refrigerators. Unlike your typical refrigerator that uses freon and a mechanical pump, these use ammonia and generate the needed pressure with heat. This system could be used with our solar oven. The concentrated rays from the sun could be used to heat the sytem instead of propane. Not sure how efficient this would be, but it is interesting to think about a way to use the sun to cool.
There are also several experiments ongoing in making energy efficient homes. One guy who built his idea of an energy efficient house had to install an air exchange system because the house was so air tight it would get low on oxygen. :) Pair something with that with my LED plans and you have a cheap energy bill.
