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Some of The Many Benefits Of Renewable Energy The benefits of renewable energy could fill volumes of books. Solar power, and wind energy are not new concepts, and have been around for decades. When they first started playing around with these ideas, solar panels were large and bulky, and didn't have optimum capacity. While the technologies for the actual wind turbines are better, they too were large, like the ones you see on wind farms of today. Both of these are considered dinosaurs now, but the benefits they had were that they were the prototypes for the wonders that are out today. Today, solar power has advanced by leaps and bounds. Panels are much smaller, and the photovoltaic cells are much more sensitive, and able to pick up much more solar energy, and are available in smaller sizes. The technologies and materials have come down in prices, and even the average person can buy the solar cells, and build their own panels. For wind energy, new techniques are now used, and while those large wind turbines are still found on wind farms, there are much smaller units that can be used for residential applications. Instead of horizontal axis turbines, it was discovered that you could change the blades to vertical axis, and this has improved wind turbines in many ways. Now with vertical axis turbines, you don't need as much speed to produce wind energy. Just ten miles an hour will turn the vertical blades, and instead of one fixed direction, the wind can be blowing from any direction to make them turn. The gear components are reduced dramatically as well, because you can use a straight shaft connected directly to the generator itself. Realistically, you could put together a small vertical axis wind generator with some cut PVC pipes, some bicycle rims, an alternator, and some basic materials for the frame and shaft. Solar power has also come down so much that there are many different DIY kits available, both for solar and wind power systems. Materials are quite reasonable, and the most expensive components are really going to be the inverters, and battery back up systems. Even so, they are still quite reasonable, and you can put together these alternative power systems for under five thousand dollars. Now for the many benefits of using alternative energy. For one thing, you can save money right away on utility bills. After putting the system together and into regular use, you electric bill can be cut in the first month, and may be eliminated altogether within the first few months. So let's you spent a round figure of five thousand dollars to put your solar power or wind energy system in place. Now it depends on where you live, the time of year, and how much electricity you use, what your bill is. Just as an example, say you spend an average of $100 a month. Buy using alternative and renewable energy, the system could completely pay for itself in less than five years. That is really an excellent return on investment. Now let's say that your wind energy or solar power system is still tied into the grid, even though your aren't using it any more. With the combination of power systems, even filling storage batteries for future usage, you could conceivably make more electricity than you use. If you are still connected to the grid, that surplus energy feeds back to the utilities. If you have a contract made up with the power company, by law they have to purchase this surplus energy from you. So not only will you save money, but you could also stand to make some money as well. Now that you know how YOU can benefit from these renewable sources of energy, let's see how the planet benefits as well. For one thing, wind energy, and solar power are completely free. They don't require any use of depleting natural resources, nor do they give off any harmful gases into the atmosphere. Since you are not drawing power from plants that use fossil fuels, it cuts down on both the use of fossil fuel, as well as toxic emissions. If every home around the world went with just these two green energy sources, imagine how much it would cut down on greenhouse gases in the first year alone. If this could be implemented both for commercial as well as residential applications, we could possibly cut global warming in half. Author: Jo from AfricanEnergies, always looking for ways to promote green living and use of alternate energies. http://www.africanenergies.com/
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