Posts Tagged ‘Energy’

How Can You Store Power?

Our world has arrived at a place where it relies completely on electricity.  We use energy for just about everything from powering mobile  phones to warming our homes. In the days before we had such energy available, we just had the light from lamps and ambient heat from burning timber. When electricity came about, we were able to quickly illuminate entire towns.

When electrical energy first started to spread, lots of people were skeptical. If you have a look at today, we use so much electrical power, we are running out of the fuel to help generate it. We are slowing using up all of the non-renewable sources to make electrical power so we need to find alternatives. Maybe the best form of renewable energy is solar and numerous scientists are trying to find ways to store the energy effectively. If conventional methods are used for saving energy, then storing solar energy can mean a continual usage of water as well as other necessities.

Solar power may be stored in materials that come from natural resources in a process referred to as thermal mass systems. Solar powered energy can be kept in a number of natural sources, like in water or dirt and in man made sources like concrete. Thermal mass may be used to heat things like water in your house. Using other sources to keep solar power is wonderful for the short term, it isn’t practical as a long term remedy. Another way to keeping heat from solar energy is using thermo-chemical phase. It includes a variety of storage types like paraffin wax and Eutectic Salts.

In the matter of paraffin, it is a solid when it’s cold, but when it is heated, it melts and it retains the heat for a long time. Even if it cools down and turns hard, the wax still is able to retain heat. Eutectic Salts is yet another way to save heat and it actually stays warmer than Paraffin wax. Molten Salts is yet another effective way to store solar energy which is done by making steam. The process starts when molten salts are heated in the storage tank. Rechargeable batteries may be used to keep the energy and provide power to the power source. The most common type of battery employed for this kind of storage is a lead acid battery.

There are several ways to save natural energy, but up to now they aren’t as practical or efficient as they ought to be. Ultimately, we will see ways to get a limitless supply of natural heat when storage methods are improved.

Using the Sun to Keep Your Home Warm

Heating a home interior is for most people almost a reflex action – just hit this button or turn up this dial. There are many ways though, which could be just as easy but with other advantages. Solar powered energy, which is not tough to install, is an affordable method of heating schools and businesses, and even homes. In the wintertime, there are a number of ways to capture the rays of the sun. A solar source such as a sun room is necessary, which not only attracts sunshine but also keeps the heat in it.

A sun room is generally attached to the house and is made out of a lot of floor to ceiling glass panels. To be able to get the whole effect of the heat, these rooms are usually situated so they are facing the morning sun. Everything in the room becomes heated up by the sun light as the sun shines through the glass into the room. The heat doesn’t escape through the glass, and stays within the room. As long as the room is constructed the proper way, the heat is very efficient, along with being natural.

Some of the other kinds of solar power heat include such things as thermal mass, which holds in the heat after it absorbs it. It does this as the sun is intense, keeping in the heat and then dispersing it after the sun goes down.

Then there’s the trombe wall, a natural solar heating and ventilation system which functions by the use of air channels which retain the heat. A thermal mass and a glass object are placed to face the sun, and the heat is trapped between them. The heat is kept in a wall and subsequently radiated by it, moving through appropriately situated vents. A different one that also utilizes a wall facing the sun is a transpired collector, which warms the air with the captured sunlight, as it is distributed through the ventilation system.

Solar is not just for warming, you also get solar cooling systems for ventilating buildings. This innovative method has a steam engine run by solar with an attached cooling device. This assimilates the heat from the steam and transforms it to ice.

One other solar ventilation system is the solar chimney, which is constructed from a hollowed out thermal mass. Air in the chimney is heated and as it rises it is distributed to where it is needed. From the foregoing it is clear that many ways exist by which residences, schools and businesses can be heated. These are just some of the ways where you can use the heat from the sun in addition to natural materials. Only renewable resources are used and the heating is entirely natural.

If you’re looking for ways to heat up your residence without making use of non-renewable resources, then many of these examples might be of interest to you. The sun powers each of them. You might need to live in an area where the sun shines on a consistent basis to fully make use of any of these systems. Everyone requires a source of energy for heating up their house.