[TEMPLATE]Renewable Energy[/TEMPLATE]
[TEMPLATE]Equipment & Tools[/TEMPLATE]
[TEMPLATE]home improvement store[/TEMPLATE]
Alternative Energy and Benefits
Author: Energy 4 Earth
Alternative Energy refers to the electrical energy derived from the renewable resources like wind and solar energy. These resources can be used all over again unlike the single use resources like coal and uranium.
Some benefits of using the Renewable Energy Resources are that these are non-emission sources and do not produce any harmful or toxic by products. Another good point is that these resources can be put to task at homes as well to produce electrical energy. As the sources don’t get used up, you can use it again and again without any worries. So solar energy, there are solar panels, wind mills and generators for wind energy, and turbines for water energy. The solar panels can be installed at homes with less cost and save on the electricity bills. The wind generators and turbines are a bit costly and can be used for an area or group of homes.
But if you are wondering why renewable energy sources and systems are not that common, it is due to the financial reasons. The cost of a wind or solar energy farm for a large scale use can prove costly for the installation and maintenance. But now the governments are coming up with subsidized loan programs to promote alternative energy development.
Now-a-days, with the advancement in technology people have found cheaper ways to install wind turbines and solar panels. After installing the system, you will see considerable differences in your electricity bills. So we must move to the Alternative Energy Source before our fossil fuel resources get used up.
About the Author
The author has been into saving energy from past 5 years and now he invites you to understand how to save energy at home, at his website Renewable Energy 4 Earth. If you save energy, then you indirectly save money apart from reducing expenditures. Read more about the this concept, by visiting the renewableenergy4earth.com today.
[TEMPLATE]amazon search[/TEMPLATE]
how do hydrogen fuel cells compare to solar or wind energy as an alternative energy source?
What companies are the best in supplying Alternative Energy Generators(Solar, Wind…)?
Hello,
I was wondering if one day I wanted to buy good products for generating energy from alternative resources like the Wind power and the Solar power, which companies are the best in supplying those kinds of generators?
I’m not just thinking of small generators for homes, I’m thinking of a bigger level too. Like for big industrial companies or even National level!
Thanks a lot for your expertise exchange
Alternative Energy Source: Can we use the air rushing past highway vehicles to generate useful wind energy?
For example, placing small wind turbines right next to the high-speed highways.
If pursuing alternative energy (solar, wind, etc) have a lot of benefits, why do some people still oppose it?
Wouldn’t it create more jobs and be better for the environment, and also reduce dependency on foreign oil?
What are some reasons why some people are against alternative energy?
Wind as alternative energy?
Wind as alternative energy?
can you give me some reliable sites for wind energy?
this is for a project.
thanks.
Mr. Solar
Specializes in renewable energy products including solar panels, batteries, solar kits, and other items.
http://www.mrsolar.com
Kyocera Solar
Network of solar energy companies answering the growing worldwide demand for reliable, economical, solar-generated electrical power.
http://www.kyocerasolar.com
Big Frog Mountain
Manufacturer of solar panels, wind generators, inverters, batteries, and other renewable energy equipment.
http://www.bigfrogmountain.com
Sierra Solar Systems
Engineers solar electric and solar pumping systems worldwide.
http://www.sierrasolar.com
Alternative energy is much like alternative medicine in that it isn’t really any good (you’re assuming it has a lot of benefits when it turns out that it doesn’t (unless you’re a coal miner whose job would go were a switch to nuclear power to occur)).
Hydro and geothermal work OK but only for limited areas (and high levels of hydro are one of the things that countries with low CO2 emissions tend to have along with high levels of nuclear) and we’re probably not going to be able to build much new hydro in the developed world due to environmental reasons.
Wind turns out to be almost useless due to the low reliability (and people are starting to realise that it is useless) since it requires either energy storage technology (pumped hydro which is all we have isn’t really good enough) or fossil fuel backup (which means you still have to emit CO2 when the wind isn’t blowing) and that fossil fuel backup is usually simple cycle gas turbines (converting them to combined cycle and removing the wind turbines would probably reduce CO2 emissions).
Of course there are times when wind power is built without sufficient spinning reserve, such as in Texas which has been having to do load shedding of big industrial customers when the wind stops (that’s a pretty big deal) due to their 3% wind power suddenly going off-line. Wind doesn’t look like it’s capable of even 5% of a grid without energy storage technology.
Solar is less unreliable than wind but if your solar panels are on Earth they only work less than half the time (though there is a bit more predictability in terms of when the clouds are going to role in and when it’ll be night than there is with wind), of course PV happens to be about the most expensive way to generate electricity on Earth (only Pu238 RTGs cost more and those things are pretty much restricted to the space program (and used where solar can’t work)).
Biofuels really screw up food prices and when deforestation is taken into account turn out to emit more CO2 than oil. A lot of them (e.g. wood) are very polluting (enough to justify a ban on wood fired heaters).
Other reasons to be against alternative energy are NIMBY issues like hydroelectric dams requires flooding people’s homes (and risk to those who live downstream), wind turbines producing a lot of noise (and possible negative health effects from infrasonics (more study is needed though)) along with a strobe light effect to those who live near them (an exclusion zone would probably work though) as well as opposition to the transmission lines used to get the power from the remote environmental sources of energy to the grid (the health effects from power lines have been investigated and found to not exist but that doesn’t stop people from fearing them). Those issues would be minor issues if the alternative energy sources actually were useful (i.e. we could deal with them) but with useless energy sources that’s too big a price to pay.
The large scale of most alternative energy projects also causes significant environmental problems, wind turbines are stealing energy from the wind and solar power plants often require trees to be cut down (then there are the bird and bat death issues with wind power and the waste issues of solar panel production (a solar panel is a big silicon chip)) whereas we should be using an energy source that is concentrated enough for mining and waste disposal to be of minimal impact.
“Wouldn’t it create more jobs”
So what? Doing pretty much anything can create jobs.
Personally I’d rather have as few people as possible work in the energy industry, that way we could have more people doing other jobs. You basically just want to waste human resources.
Besides, wind turbines are actually a lot more dangerous than most people realise, quite a few people have died installing and maintaining them.
“and be better for the environment,”
All that alternative energy does is distract people from nuclear fission which is a proven technology that actually can provide the energy we need, where we need it, when we need it. If not for the belief that wind and solar were viable we’d have probably replaced most of the fossil fuel burning power plants on the planet with nuclear by now (and therefore have already largely solved the global warming problem).
“and also reduce dependency on foreign oil?”
Pretty much no electricity is actually generated from oil (which is primarily a transportation fuel) so that leaves biofuels which create new problems with the food supply, dependence on foreign oil is quite a bit better than causing famines in the third world.
You can’t use an turbine attached to a moving car, as it takes more power to push the turbine through the air then it could generate.
Yes, you could locate small turbines near highways, and they would generate some power. But only intermittently, when a big truck when by. And the air swirls around so much, even that may be doubtful.
I doubt the cost would pay for the investment. Plus each one would have to be approved by the zoning boards in each area, a long slow process.
There are plenty of other locations where you can put a large turbine that gets a fairly steady wind, and would pay for the investment.
Solar and wind energy are alternative sources of energy, whereas hydrogen fuel cells are not exactly a source of energy at all, unless you have pure hydrogen. You see, hydrogen is a fuel, just like gasoline, except with no emissions other than water. The problem is that hydrogen is not abundant on earth, and must be derived from water. It takes just as much energy to do this as the hydrogen produces when used as fuel, so it is not really a source of energy, but rather a mode of transporting energy. Any source of energy, however, may be used to get hydrogen from water, including solar and wind.
http://www.icax.co.uk/alternative_energy.html
http://apps1.eere.energy.gov/states/alternatives/resources_by_state.cfm