Solar Power & Energy

Gary Reysa of BuildItSolar.com states that “Solar space heating can be 25 or more times more cost effective than solar electric (PV) systems…” There are several ways to build solar space heaters, and most of those follow very similar designs which are generally easy and inexpensive to create.

Passive or Active
Solar space heaters work by allowing sunlight in through glass. The sunlight heats up air in the space behind the glass, and the glass prevents the generated heat from escaping.

Passive solar heating systems require no moving parts or electricity, while active systems have small fans to help circulate the heater air.

Passive systems work on a thermosyphon–or convection–process. Because hot air naturally rises, a passive solar system allows cool air to enter at the bottom of a heater, and once it has been warmed by the sun it escapes into the home out the top of the heater.

An active solar …

Overview
Solar furnaces aren’t quite as robust and large as conventional home furnace systems are. Solar heaters are usually space heating designs, which heat a room or space in a home instead of the entire house at once.

Conventional Furnace
To use a conventional whole house furnace with solar power, you’d need to buy a solar panel power generating kit and connect it to an electric furnace. Then you’d be using solar power to run the furnace instead of using standard household electricity.

Running a whole house electric furnace on solar power could be expensive however, depending upon how large your furnace is and how much power it needs. Home furnaces tend to use a lot of electricity, and the more your furnace needs to be on the more solar power you’ll need to be able to collect for it.

Determining how much electricity your furnace needs is a simple math equation: The number of …

I just bought the Sunforce 60 Watt Solar Panel Generator Kit from Amazon. It arrived here on Tuesday afternoon and I was very happy with most of the packaging.

This kit has had both good and bad reviews through Amazon in the last 18 months or so - for various reasons too and I’ll get into those. The kit is super cheap compared to most solar panels and solar power kits on the market right now though, so I thought I’d try it out as a starter system.

First of all, this solar power kit is made with older technology and cheap parts. It’s actually made in China, so there have been some quality issues for other buyers. I knew going into the deal that I wouldn’t be getting top of the line solar …