Sos Roofline Systems

Posts Tagged ‘environmental’

Solar panels are mechanisms used to generate and supply electricity to commercial and residential facilities. A solar panel, interconnected assemblies of solar cells packaged together, generates small amounts of power. As such, they are most frequently found in installations that include many solar panels. The panels use the photovoltaic effect to generate light energy into electricity. Solar panels are delicate and must be protected from damage from transport, installation, use and weather. For the panels to work properly they must be connected electrically to each other and to the system.

If you are looking for high quality and effective solar panels, monocrystalline silicon solar panels are the right choice. Monocrystalline silicon panels are made from a single sheet of silicon, with pieces of metal nailed to the edges to increase conductivity. The solar panels have a 14% to 18% return rate, the highest currently available. That being said, they are also the most expensive on the market. If you plan to use your solar panels long term, the investment is worth it.

If you’re looking for inexpensive solar panels that are nearly as effective as monocrystalline, you’ll want to obtain polycrystalline silicon solar panels. Polycrystalline silicon panels some of the cheapest on the market because they are cheaper to produce. Despite cost, they still have a 12% to 14% electricity return rate. Polycrystalline silicon panels are made up of individual PV cells with metal conducting materials nailed to the sides. Maintaining polycrystalline silicon panels is easier and less expensive than monocrystalline panels, as cells can be replaced individually without replacing the entire panel.

Another variety of solar panel are string ribbon silicon panels. They are very similar to polycrystalline silicon panels and have about the same electricity return rate of 12% to 14%. Instead of being made up of PV cells, string ribbon silicon panels are made up of strings of strips of silicon attached to metal bars instead of PV cells. Using silicon strips instead of PV cells makes the cost of producing string ribbon silicon panels slightly less than producing polycrystalline silicon solar panels.

The cheapest panel to produce is the amorphous silicon solar panel. It is a very simple construction – a piece of semi conductive metal with a thin layer of silicon film on top attached to metal pieces. It is not made with polycrystalline silicon and as such does not have a high electricity return rate, just 5% to 6%. These panels are inefficient and cost ineffective. However, if you are looking for quick and temporary solar panels, amorphous silicon panels would be the proper choice.

Now Try – www.solarcentury.co.uk

One of the areas that seems the least understood when using green products is the “carbon footprint”. To illustrate this point about green products, a simple story about the use of CFL (Compact Florescent Lamp) bulbs may help. When in a restaurant the other day, I noticed that the spoon was missing from the place setting. I looked around and it appeared it was the same all over the restaurant.

When my server came over and asked what I wanted to eat, I asked about the spoons. I was informed that the chain’s “corporate” office had informed all the restaurants that the busboy, when putting down place setting, was not allowed to put a spoon on the setting. Now I must say this does look pretty odd, mostly since I grew up with a spoon included with the setting. I checked with someone who still teaches etiquette classes, and yep, it is still required.

I asked if she knew why this change had occurred and why no green products like CFL bulbs. I was told that in order to conserve energy that spoons were only given to customers that would use them. It appears they believe that it costs a lot to clean an unused spoon. So the possibility of cleaning an unused spoon was removed. And yet how odd, no investment in green products that could save money such as CFL bulbs.

Given how the dishes in a restaurant are washed, I find this amazing. In almost every restaurant in this country an automatic dishwasher is used. It is designed to load from the left side and the dishes move through it in a large basket to the right. Simple, fast and efficient and it is not even on the green products list. Most people that do the dishes do the silverware in a single basket run. Hence, no money would be saved and no energy savings but why no green products?

While pondering on this I looked up and noticed that the entire restaurant was covered in lights. Each light was an incandescent bulb and no green products like CFL bulbs anywhere. I stopped when I reached fifty bulbs that I could see from my table; I know there were more in back kitchen area, in the bar and adjoining rooms.

Looking around it was easy to see that most of the incandescent bulbs were in the 75 watt range. I asked and was told this restaurant was open 138 hours each week.

Now it does not take a mathematician to do a little basic math. Let’s compare a chain using incandescent bulb vs. the same chain using CFL bulbs. If we take the 50 incandescent bulbs and multiply it by the bulb’s wattage, it would equal the watts consumed per hour or 50*75= 3,750. Now we know the store is open 138 hours a week, so multiplying this by the watts per hour, we would get 517,500 watts consumed per week. Finally multiply this by the weeks in a year, and we get 517,500*52 = 26,910,000 or 27 megawatts without green products.

From the Internet I was able to learn that they have 88 stores in their chain. So if we assume this is an average store we can multiply the 27 megawatts times the 88 stores and we see that this chain is using around 2368 megawatts per year just on lighting.

What if we used one of the new green products, the CFL bulb, instead of the incandescent bulb how much could we save? Let’s take a look. We know that a comparable CFL would be in the 18 watt range based on the Energy Star tables. If we replace the 75 watts in the above equation with 18 watts CFL we would get; 50*18*138*52*88 = 568 megawatts consumed per year. This would save the chain about 2368-568 = 1,800 megawatt hours per year. I would say this would be a pretty good investment in green products, don’t you?

Tried of spending money on cheap green lighting checkout Michael’s website at Green power

Can you imagine getting electrical power from balloons? This is what Cool Earth of Livermore, California, has designed the next generation of solar collectors to look like. The basic concept hasn’t changed; convert sunlight into electric power using solar cells; but the packaging has changed, and this is where the solar balloons are unique.

The current installed solar plants use flat-panels. Each panel is heavy, large, easily damaged, and costly to repair. This means the cost to produce a watt of electricity is 5-7 times greater than using natural gas and is not a feasible alternative to fossil fuels. This is no longer true with the Cool Earth solar balloon system.

The system’s design is centered on the concept of an air-filled Mylar balloon like a children’s birthday balloon. One half of the balloon is a highly reflective mirror-like surface and the other half is transparent. The solar cell is located at the center of the clear side allowing sunlight to pass by, be collected and focused back onto the solar cell.

With the new design comes and the ability to increase sunlight concentration and reduce expensive solar cell material by 300 to 400 times. This cost reduction will bring the price down to a mere one dollar per watt. To give that some context: a typical flat-panel PV(photovoltaic) system on a residential rooftop is about seven to eight dollars per watt.

Each balloon is eight feet in diameter and can withstand over 100 mile per hour winds. The balloons are linked together in series, with the initial installation able to produce 10 megawatts, enough to power 3,500 homes during the day.

Like all solar designs, the system will not be used as a base power plant because the energy collected during the day cannot be economically stored for nighttime operations. On the other hand, the system will be an ideal “peaker” power plant to be used during the hot summer months when energy demands are high.

Another of the aspects we find most interesting at Green Products is how the balloons are linked together with wire, wood and sheet metal. We are also impressed at the lack of limitations that are imposed when the systems are installed and how they eliminate the destructive heat that destroys most solar cells. Soon this system will be installed and go online. Check it out.

Michael

Canvas grocery bags have recently been making an appearance at the entrance to many grocery stores, selling for about $2 per bag. We know that plastic bags are bad for the environment, but are stores really trying to be more environmentally friendly, or are they just trying to get their customers to buy something else? Are canvas bags really more efficient than plastic bags?

When it comes to your budget, in some countries it’s better to bring your own bag than to rely on the plastic bags the stores give you. Some places charge for the bags themselves. Ireland has put a customer tax on their plastic bags.

On the other hand, the United States is more dependent on their cars than some other countries. When customers walk, ride a bike, or take public transport to the grocery store, they tend to buy fewer items at once, although they might visit more often.

In the United States, with our abundance of large vehicles and long distances, shoppers tend to visit the grocery store just a couple of times per month and buy large quantities at once. For this kind of shopping, is it practical to use canvas bags when one shopping trip alone can garner more than a dozen of the plastic bags?

Yet, we still know that canvas is better for the environment. Some cities in the United States are now making laws to try to curb our plastic habit. San Francisco recently passed a law making it illegal for large grocery stores to use plastic bags. As an alternative, they offer biodegradable paper bags. Boston is also considering doing this, although some customers allege that doing this causes a new kind of problem with the environment-the cutting down of trees.

However, most shoppers report that they have made the switch to canvas bags and feel good about themselves. They say that it’s rewarding to feel as if they are doing their part in “going green.”

Even though many plastic bags end up clogging drains, piled in the landfill, and flying helter-skelter through the streets during a gusty day, some people have found other ways to use the bags, even though less than 3% are recycled. You can always use them to line small garbage cans instead of buying a large box of garbage bags or use them to line cat littler boxes.

For those who prefer the canvas bags, the argument exists that the plastic bags in stores are now being made of a poorer quality and aren’t as sturdy as the canvas bags. Plastic bags generally have to be doubled for heavy or awkward purchases and can often rip on the corners of boxes. Canvas bags can generally hold heavier items.

Although paper bags were used in the past, they were often cumbersome and awkward since they didn’t have handles and customers could rarely carry more than one at a time. The canvas bags, at least, have handles like the plastic bags do, allowing customers to sling a few over their arms.

If customers don’t want to purchase a canvas bag at the grocery store, they can always find them online or in other shops. There are many websites that sell canvas grocery bags and they can usually be personalized as well.

Some bags found online also come with shoulder straps, as well as handles, making them great to use when walking some distance.

Switching to canvas bags might take some readjusting on the shopper’s part. An idea is to make several small trips to the store instead of one or two large trips. Or, shoppers can just buy several canvas bags to use every time they go.

An advantage of the canvas bags is that even though they tend to cost about $2 per bag, they last a long time. If shoppers use them properly, they should last about six months. They can also be washed and some are made from recycled materials.

For now, using the canvas bags is mostly a choice on the shopper’s part. However, if more laws are passed in the future, it might not be up to the customer which type of bag they use. For that reason, it might be wise to go ahead and start getting used to the canvas.