Is your hot water usage putting you in hot water?

Then read GREEN TIPS published by UCS, which I am a member! and I urge you to join UCS even if you are not a scientist. It is a good source of information on energy, world and local matters that matters to all of us, and pure good science for cleaner and healthier living. Most of my articles are originated from the ideas I receive from UCS and I am sure you will wonder, why did not I find this site before!

Now back in to hot water, A few years, a decade ago, I worked on a project to introduce Solar Energy to a third world country, factory. This factory needed a lot of hot water and steam in order to operate and they were spending a fortune in heating water that used boilers that were so old I could not even guess the age.
Due to monitory reasons they were not willing to replace the boilers and the project fund was not that big either.
So we decided to construct solar water heaters on the factory roof and feed the boilers with heated water so that it would use less energy to heat the water. All the people were sceptical because the factory was in a cold area higher up in the mountains. But we saw that, when sun shines, it shines better.
The water the factory was getting was from a natural stream, and water was cold to touch.
So we sat out to produce solar water heater, which were very crude, from copper plates, copper tubes and Matt black paint. We produced about 30 panels about one square meter and connected them in serial manner. We fed cold water in one end and checked out the other end, Viola, near steaming water came out on sunny days. Even on cold gloomy days, water temperature was much higher than that of the stream.
The factory workers and the owners (The same) were very happy to see the results. They started saving a lot of money as they connected the output of the solar heater to the input of the boilers. After a decade, now they have much better solar heater and boilers. All made locally by technicians that we trained. This is something I always remember when I think of solar power. It makes me extremely happy.
Now back to the UCS green tips article,

Water heating accounts for approximately 15 percent of the average household’s total energy consumption (and a sizable chunk of its energy costs). If your water heater is more than 10 years old it is likely running at less than 50 percent efficiency—wasting energy and money—but most people don’t replace their water heater until it fails. Upgrading to a new, more efficient model will lower not only your monthly expenses, but also your contribution to air pollution and global warming.

Before you shop for a new water heater, however, make sure you’ve done everything you can to minimize your hot water use. Install water-saving fixtures and appliances, for example, and insulate your pipes. Then, choose the most energy-efficient model that meets your needs and budget; three types are described below.

So I ask you to click on the link below and read the rest of the article, you may get out of the hot water you are in right now!
Links;
Hot water with less worry
UCS Union of Concerned Scientists
Incentives for renewable energy

Tags: solar water heater, save energy, solar energy, Solar Heat, UCS, <a href="http://technorati.com/tag/green+tips" rel="tag">green tips

How Solar Power works Part II

Passive Solar Design for Buildings

One simple, obvious use of sunlight is to light our buildings. If properly designed, buildings can capture the sun's heat in the winter and minimize it in the summer, while using daylight year-round. Buildings designed in such a way are utilizing passive solar energy—a resource that can be tapped without mechanical means to help heat, cool, or light a building. South-facing windows, skylights, awnings, and shade trees are all techniques for exploiting passive solar energy. Buildings constructed with the sun in mind can be comfortable and beautiful places to live and work.

Residential and commercial buildings account for more than one-third of U.S. energy use.[1] Solar design, better insulation, and more efficient appliances could reduce this demand by 60 to 80 percent. There are several hundred thousand passive solar homes in the United States, but there should be many more. Simple design features such as properly orienting a house toward the south, putting most windows on the south side of the building, and taking advantage of cooling breezes in the summer are inexpensive yet improve the comfort and efficiency of a home.

Solar Heat Collectors

Besides using design features to maximize their use of the sun, some buildings have systems that actively gather and store solar energy. Solar collectors, for example, sit on the rooftops of buildings to collect solar energy for space heating, water heating, and space cooling. Most are large, flat boxes painted black on the inside and covered with glass. In the most common design, pipes in the box carry liquids that transfer the heat from the box into the building. This heated liquid—usually a water-alcohol mixture to prevent freezing—is used to heat water in a tank or is passed through radiators that heat the air.

Oddly enough, solar heat can also power a cooling system. In desiccant evaporators, heat from a solar collector is used to pull moisture out of the air. When the air becomes drier, it also becomes cooler. The hot moist air is separated from the cooler air and vented to the outside. Another approach is an absorption chiller. Solar energy is used to heat a refrigerant under pressure; when the pressure is released, it expands, cooling the air around it. This is how conventional refrigerators and air conditioners work, and it’s a particularly efficient approach for home or office cooling since buildings need cooling during the hottest part of the day. These systems are currently at work in humid southeastern climates such as Florida.

Solar collectors were quite popular in the early 1980s, in the aftermath of the energy crisis. Federal tax credits for residential solar collectors also helped. In 1984, for example, 16 million square feet of collectors were sold in the United States, but when fossil fuel prices dropped and tax credits expired in the mid-1980s, demand for solar collectors plummeted. By 1987, sales were down to only four million square feet. Most of the more than one million solar collectors sold in the 1980s were used for heating hot tubs and swimming pools.

Today, about 1.5 million U.S. homes and businesses use solar water heaters—still less than one percent nationwide.[2] In other countries, solar collectors are much more common; Israel requires all new homes and apartments to use solar water heating, and 92 percent of the existing homes in Cyprus already have solar water heaters.[3] But the number of Americans choosing solar hot water could rise dramatically in the next few years. With natural gas prices at historically high levels, solar water and space heaters have become much more economic.

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, water heating accounts for about 15 percent of the average household’s energy use.[4] As natural gas and electricity prices continue to rise, the costs of maintaining a constant hot water supply will increase as well. Homes and businesses that heat their water through solar collectors could end up saving as much as $250 to $500 per year depending on the type of system being replaced.

Part III will come this week!
All work belongs to UCSUSA.ORG,

Tags: solar water heaters, Department of Energy, absorption chiller