Green Energy Vs Conventional Energy

A general rule of thumb, depending on latitude, aspect, prevailing wind of course;
Trees on the North side of the house should be conifers to block the north wind in the winter and to provide a well of cool air to pull into the house in summer, trees on the south side should be deciduous to shade the house in summer and allow max solar gain in winter.

This applies primarily to passive design and having deciduous trees on the south will adversely affect your panels as askafriend said. But panels don't have to be mounted on the roof. An outbuilding, a covered terrace, a specially sited pole will do. The most important thing with panels is siting them correctly. I looked at site yesterday that has a steep SSW facing bank that could take over 2KW of panels.

Askafriend is right, there are lots of options, all site specific, and it deserves a separate thread.

And thus one of the reasons solar has not caught on . . . there is no one-size fits all solution, so billion dollar corprations cannot be made from it.  A sad fact of life in our current financial world.

What kinds of tress?
Where are they in relation to your south face during winter months?
Summer months too if you are doing PV for electric.

I have a lot of pine trees around my house, but all to the north, west and east of the house. I have a big elm down by the creek that casts a bit of a shadow during December, but there are no leaves so it does not affect me as much.

When you live in the forest, it is actually a good idea to not have trees to close to the house, especially in the west where there is potential fire danger. We strive for at least 50 feet from a house, and farther if the tree is taller (if you have trees that falling would hit your house, then they are too close).  when I lived in town, we had 11 elm trees on a corner lot in Denver, so if that is your scenario, your house needs to be tall enough to be above the trees for roof panels (ours way).

Someone should start a new thread just on discussing solar and how to best use what you already have.

 I love trees and was very happy to buy a home that is surrounded by them.  However, trees are competitors for that lovely solar energy that I would like to power my house with!  So what are my options for solar power if I have many trees and choose not to kill them for my own needs?

Solar energy falls on every square inch of the planet at one time or another, where it falls it can be captured. I'm all for research into new ways to harness the clean, free, power of the sun but we should not lose track of the fact that, as askafriend is demonstrating with his passive solar house, we have the technology to do it now. Had we spent the money we wasted on the war in Iraq on deploying renewable energy and energy efficiency technology the US would now be energy independent. Imagine what we could do with the money poured into the black hole called AIG.

Now that the corporate world has bankrupted the nation, some conspiracy types would say intentionally, it is down to us to make that move personally. I know I've covered this ground before on Alt Globe but I feel it bears repeating.

Create your own energy independence! Make your life as energy efficient as possible and then build your own PV system and or solar thermal water system. It will cost less than the 50" plasma TV, the new car, another computer,  and the game console, all of which would have wasted energy rather than produced it. What is the better investment?

Research it, design it, scrounge the parts or buy the parts you can't scrounge, build it, use it. It is really quite easy to do. We use 12V battery systems all the time, the batteries are plentiful, 96% recyclable, and cheap. Ever put a battery charger on your car? Was it scary or some deep mystery that only a scientist could understand? No, of course not. Solar PV is not much more difficult than that. Yes there are safety issues, as with any electrical system, but with proper knowledge and a well designed system you can start down the road to energy independence. Just build a system to power a Laptop, desktop computers use too much energy, and then grow it to power something else.

As far as solar hot water goes, have you ever felt the water coming out of a hose that has been left in the sun? Imagine how much hotter it would be if that hose were behind glazing and insulated. That is how a solar thermal system works. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, it is not rocket science! Once again, be careful, the water can get extremely hot and hot water is explosive if contained, research it thoroughly.

If we must be consumers to keep this economy out of the morgue we owe it to ourselves and future generations to only consume that which increases sustainability, if it doesn't do that, let it go.

Ya da ya da ya da......

 I was just reading about an idea to capture solar energy in roads using some amazing technology.  I really like the idea of using something that is already a fact of life, instead of looking for an entirely new solution.  I expect that the cost of installing this type of road panel wouldn't be cheap, because the construction costs would be bound to be high except maybe in cases of large-scale construction that has to be done anyway.  However, even if this specific project isn't viable, this is the kind of innovation that is going to move green energy forward.

I hope to read about more elegant solutions, that provide green collar jobs and improve this country's energy independence.  No matter how much you wish to play Devil's advocate, askafriend, you can't convince me that energy independence isn't a good idea politically, for every nation.  Energy should be produced locally to keep costs down and to keep vulnerable energy supply systems small.  If we can produce energy via our highway systems, it means one less oil pipeline that could be targeted by armies or terrorists.

OK, the cat is out of the bag.  I am neither a nayayer or a conspiracy theorist, even if everyone is out to get me ;)

I just like to shake people to their core, making sure they really believe what they say, and not just spout the currently popular rhetoric.  There was a time all the educated people thought the world was flat, or that everything revolved around the earth. . .

Someone handed me a DVD at the grocery store the other day, and I actually loaded and watched it.  It was a high school physics science teacher turned [everything I put in there sounds derogatory, and I do not mean it that way] who was spouting creationist theory, i.e. the Earth and all it inhabitants are only 10,000 years old, because when you add up all the ages of all the descendants of Adam and Eve, that is what it totals.

He made a very compelling case, and was able to put logical holes into all the things the darwinians say is true (like dinosaurs), age of the earth, etc.  all backed with real science.  sort of like the climate folks have done.

My vanity comment was a placation - Mt St Helens eruption in the 70's did a ton of damage across the entire Western US - much more damage then man can imagine (unless we went back to nuclear war, and even then, thousands of Hiroshimas).  Living in Colorado, I see the wonder of mans achievements in mountain highways, but mama nature can shut it down with a few feet of snow deliverd overnight.  We are ants on the back of an elephant with how much we can affect.

but like ants, we CAN affect things around us, expecially when we get everyone working together - whether it is to burn coal and gas in our cars - or move away from fossil fuels to something renewable.  Although we are ONE, we do not act like it, the left arm not knowing what the right arm is doing etc.

As far as coming back to another life - I am doing my best to finish any reason I need to have another human experience in THIS lifetime.  This old soul is ready to go back to God, and if you look at the natural calamities that are accelerating on earth  - not to mention the building desire of many humans to want somthing greater (and I am not talking about money or fame here, folks) one might hope that the end is near!

Namaste

p.s. I can only live with apathy if I am ignorant - Someone once asked me what I thought of all the ignorance and apathy in the world, my reply "I do not know, and I do not care."

I thought the debate over whether climate change was a reality – human made or not – was an old one. I thought that even big business and those individuals who stand to benefit from continuing activities that contribute to climate change had even accepted the science. Obviously I am wrong (this tends to happen on the odd occasion :)  

All I can say my friend is that don’t shoot the messenger. There seems to be an underlying mistrust and sensitivity to both “politicians” and those in “ivory towers” in your posts. Ok, I admit there is good reason for this, but who should replace them in the environmental decision-making process.

Also remember that everything is not a conspiracy theory. Sure, many stand to make a lot of money out of the entire climate change phenomenon and sometimes the fixes can cause unseen consequences (a pattern that we have repeatedly seen in the past), but should this prevent us from taking action. Perhaps we should just go and sit on the couch for the next 30 years. 

Rather than using “human vanity” in the way you do, I think it is quite the opposite. That is, you say that it is vanity to think we as a human race have such power over the Earth. Of course we do! You just need to look around at all the other environmental disasters of the past and the devastating effects of them. It is certainly not human vanity to say that the majority of us have swallowed our pride and admitted to our environmental wrongs.

It kind of reminds me of those who do not believe dinosaurs walked the Earth. The scientists are just making the entire thing up right.

Anyway I had better go. Seen as the scientists have no idea about what they are talking about and seen as climate change is not a reality, I have a date with my couch and my friend apathy for the next 30 years.
 

I'm not currently living off grid, or in a passive solar house, though where I currently live relies on rainwater harvesting and has no heating.

We could go round and round about the science, suffice it to say that there are many models, not just one, all pointing to the same thing and research on the ground is revealing that climate change, whether anthropogenic or not is accelerating. 95% of the Nobel laureates agree as does every single head of an earth science department at every major university. Government and corporations do not have a vested interest in accepting climate change, we've just seen 8 years of a government doing it's best to deny it. The hard choice is to accept it as truth.

It's not rocket science! I think it is vanity that got us into this mess. Assuming that we endlessly expand and solve all our problems with technology. The precautionary principle requires that if we think it may be likely, even without proof, we need to act and as you say acting to reduce our footprint on mother earth can't be a bad thing.  In every moment we act, we can choose to make our actions positive within our own system of ethics.

Now that we both have expressed our viewpoints shall we leave it at that.

It is your action that counts in this case because it helps to achieve both our goals for whatever reason.

Live is a dream but as a buddhist I believe I will be born to this dream, bliss or nightmare, again and again. I'd like to make it bliss.

Cheers

I am not sure you can assume that humans have caused the climate change.  The more we learn, the less we know.

Personally, I think it is our vanity that lets us believe we have such a control over an ecosystem that is affected by the wings of a butterfly.  Action causes problems, reaction causes problems, what is a person to do?

More fundamentally, do I think we should continue to rape Mother Earth of her resources?  I live in sunny Colorado, and pay maybe $100 a year in heating bills because I have a passive solar house.  If I added some photovoltaic panels to my roof, I could probably say next year I only spent $100 or so on electricity.  to me, both are  compelling arguments to take advantage of solar on a micro scale, regardless of whether it helps slow the climate change or not.

but that is just me. . . I am sure other disagree - that is the beauty of living the human experience

The science is NOT clear and unequivocal.  I work with rocket scientists from IBM that have taken the same model and come up with very different conclusions. The current models throw out data that does not support their hypothesis, or take upticks in data and turn them into hockey sticks.

Fortunately, we will know in 3-4 years, when the next mini-ice age is upon us.  Hopefully by then we will have weened ourselves off of the bounty Mother Earth has provided before her stores are picked bare.

Let's face it, the inventor of the Internet and potatoe head Al gore never gets anything right.  Why do we believe him now?  Why have many brilliant scientists been black-balled for telling an alternate (to Al gores) truth? why are ivory tower educational folks right m,when those inthe real worlds are not? We are controlled by our government, and everything is political.  Yippe for the current economic times - a big change is coming!

C Robb - you are doing all the right things.  Get off the grid, because it may not be there in a few years.  Grow your own food and become totally self sustaining, because that may be the only way to survive when anarchy hits.  And living on a boat is good, because if the waters do rise, so will you!

Oh, and remember, life is really just a dream, so none of it REALLY matters in the end ;)

The science is clear and unequivocal. We no longer have the luxury of time to wait for the technology to come online that will "clean up" fossil fuels. We also don't have time to wait for enough RE to come online. While we are deploying as much RE as we can, we must work to insure that not a single more tonne of coal is dug and not another barrel of oil is pumped. In order to make that work we must adopt a level of austerity unprecedented in recent history of the consumerist west. We must grow as much of our own food as possible, abandon agribusiness to organic agriculture, halt deforestation, and stop driving internal combustion powered personal vehicles.

Yes, this will be uncomfortable but not as uncomfortable as rapidly rising sea levels, the drying out of the temperate zones and the failure of the crops grown there, and the relocation of millions of environmental refugees.

I do not believe climate change is a fact (at least not the fact that we humans are altering it).  Nonetheless, there is no reason we should be raping Mother Earth for our energy, when the solar system sees fit to provide us with an unending stream of sun and wind.