There’s a lot of people who are fed up with high energy prices and would like to pull the plug and live off the grid these days. But there are a lot of ways we use power, and solar electric alone is costly and has a few other disadvantages (like it goes away at night.) Just what would it take to live off solar power alone?

Title: Living Green. Can You Live Just by Solar Power?

Author: Sparksy

With energy sources rapidly diminishing, it has never been more important that we use the sources of energy available to us for free solar energy. Notwithstanding its ready availability, solar energy gives us a degree of control over environmental pollution.

Many people like the idea of ‘living green’ but generally shy away from the installation of solar power solutions at home because they imagine that it would be very be expensive and difficult to do yourself. But, nothing could be further from the truth. It’s actually very easy to employ these kind of solar power solutions. The added bonus is that these will help to lower your power bills. On top of lower bills and self sufficiency you can also rest easy in the knowledge that you’re doing your bit to save power for future mankind.

The purpose of article is to look at the various solar power options available for home use.

Solar cooker: A solar cooker is generally a small box that you can use for cooking in much the same way as a conventional cooker except that it has no means of connection to any form of grid electricity or gas. On some of the larger models you can quite happily cook food for up to five people. you’re thinking that it can’t be much good without conventional means of power, you’d be wrong! You can cook the same kind of meals that you would have at home, you can boil,roast and bake just the same.

I have to be honest though and say that it does take longer but given the fact that you’re using a free source of energy, this is a superb option for cutting down those ever increasing electricity bills and saving some power.

Solar home lighting: A solar home lighting system consists of a number of solar panels (dependent on the size of your home) and simply converts sunlight into electrical energy for you to use at home. It uses the same kind of energy cells that you find on a pocket calculator which you charge with solar energy except that these home solar panels store the electricity it creates for later use. With a calculator, if you move out of the light, they tend to dim or switch off.

With home solar panels they hold on to the power for later use. Once you’ve installed the solar home lighting system in your home you can call up your local power company and thank them for all the years they’ve been robbing you blind and they can now put their bills where the sun don’t shine!

Solar heating system: Solar heating systems are rapidly becoming the norm these days with many of the new homes being built having the solar heating panels pre-installed, and many existing home owners carrying out an installation. The various companies providing solar power solutions for homes have now designed the solar panels to be more aesthetically-pleasing and I’m sure that if you’ve seen them on rooftops, they kind of look a bit like sky-lights.

Any of the above solar energy solutions can be expensive if you buy from a store and it gets even more expensive if you have the system fitted by a professional. However, despite popular belief (as perpetuated by professional fitters no doubt) it is not difficult to do your self and you can make a start from as little as a couple hundred bucks. That kind of money will see you making a big return on your investment in a very short period of time. Bye-bye power bills.

About the author: If you want to know how you can use solar and wind power to generate electricity for your home click here now!