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There is lots of talk about making our homes more energy efficient and adding solar to existing structures. Well John Kosmer discovered that this was not the way to go and to prove it he built his own house using passive solar to prove it. Nice work john. We need good examples to look up to in this day and age. Too many folks are willing to talk but you have walked the walk.

For $2.50 a day he can heat his 4000 sq foot home. Yikes that rocks. It gets cold where he lives.

From John's site

A Real Example of Solar Energy Savings Not to put too fine of a point on it, on Dec. 1, 2007 it was 17 degrees outside at 8:00 AM in Fly Creek, NY. The auxiliary heat provided by our state-of-the-art propane Baxi Luna 3 boiler cycles on at 68.5 degrees and off at 68.7 degrees. In our home at that time the thermostat read 68.7 degrees, so the Baxi unit must have recently cycled off. It was partially sunny all day. By 1:30 PM (five and a half hours later) the thermostat read 74 degrees and the temperature outside was 19 degrees. By 5 PM it was 11 degrees outside and the thermostat read 68.5 degrees so the propane Baxi boiler turned on again. In a day of partial sun when it was 19 degrees, we used no energy to heat our 4000 sq. ft. home for 9 hours. If it would have been sunny all day, the home would have heated up to 75 or 76 degrees and more heat would have been stored in the concrete slab thermal battery. The combined higher room temperature and warmer slab would have slowed down the fall in temperature in our home another 2 hours or so, thereby delaying the Baxi boiler from starting until about 7PM, enabling us to use no energy to heat our home for about 11 hours.

Energy Tags: energy resources, solar power

While reviewing the energy usage both at work and at home I did some research on the subject of hot water and central heating. I found that although our boiler at home was only 12 years old it was rated as a G on the modern scale, where A is the most efficient 95-98% and G the least efficient 20-30%.

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Solar energy is renewable, and has become quite common in areas that have a dependable number of days of sunshine such as California and Arizona. Solar heat collectors can be seen on roofs all over the Southwest.

There are many ways to use the sun to generate renewable energy. These can include the generation of electricity through photovoltaic solar cells, the generation of electricity through a concentration of solar power, or the generation of electricity by turbines and a solar updraft tower which traps heated air and thus rotates the turbines.

Solar renewable energy can heat dwellings and other commercial buildings through a passive solar design. It can heat food with the use of solar oven, and heat air or water for hot water or heating space with the thermal panels we mentioned earlier. Solar chimneys are another means of heating and cooling air.

Another [tag-tec]renewable energy resource[/tag-tec] is bio matter, which produces bio fuel. Plants are one example of bio fuel sources. Sugar can give off bio diesel, bagasse and ethanol. These can be burned in boilers or internal combustion engines. The typical method is to burn the bio fuel, thus releasing its chemical energy. Researchers are strenuously working on other ways of converting these bio fuels into electricity, perhaps through such as fuel cells.

Liquid bio fuel is composed of either bio alcohol - ethanol is one example - or bio-oil. Vegetable oil and bio diesel are two examples of the latter. Bio diesel is used in diesel engines and doesnt require much if any modification to the engine for that to happen. It can be devised from animal and virgin vegetable oil, from waste and from fats also referred to as lipids. Not only can you use virgin vegetable oil in a diesel engine but these engines were actually first designed to run not on fossil fuel but on vegetable oil.

The primary benefit of using renewable bio diesel energy is that its emissions are considerably lower. Carbon monoxide and other harmful hydrocarbon emissions are reduced by 20-40 percent with bio diesel energy. There are areas where farmers grow corn, sugar beets, switch grass, sugar cane and corn stalk for the express purpose of providing energy for fuel cells and combustion engines. These products produce ethanol, otherwise known as grain alcohol, which is becoming more and more common an automotive fuel resource. E85, an automotive fuel, is made up of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent gasoline. It is now being sold to the general public.

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Energy Tags: bio diesel

Energy used in homes is responsible for more than a quarter of the UK's carbon emissions, and about 80 per cent of the energy we use is for heating.

This is why turning down your thermostat, having good insulation and more efficient boilers can help tackle climate change, reduce air pollution, cut fuel bills and can add value to your home.

Despite this, it is troubling to think that the majority of pensioners still pay over the odds to their gas suppliers.

Yet with the right information and guidance, there are many ways to lower payments and use the extra money saved for more important things in life.

For example, by saving or investing in products that help to insulate the home, over the long run the money you save on the gas bill will pay back the outlay on keeping your home warmer.

Of course, one question many pensioners will be asking is that of where to find the money needed to carry out those improvements.

More: Cheaper Gas For The Winter continued here