I have often thought about putting solar panels on my house to reduce my needs of using electricity supplied by the Electric Company. I do not think of doing this to be "green", but rather just to reduce my monthly bills that I have to pay. Of course the investment for this sort of item is currently a bit prohibitive.
Because of the current cost of adding solar panels I have thought about alternatives of creating power, but unfortunatly I am not as technical as I would like. Some of my ideas have included adding a power generator to my incoming water supply to the house that would operate as the power generators in dams. I have also thought about hooking two batteries up to my washer, and my dryer. One battery would provide power to operate the machinery, and the other would be getting a charge from the motion of the motors in the machinery. Of course this would probably not work because I think it would require more power to operate than could be generated.
I have also had really wild ideas of running water pipes through my walls for cooling and heating, that would be heated by the sun, and the running motion would operate another dam style power generator that would help pump the water. Then the cooled water could be used in the summer time to help cool the house, and the heated water could be used in the winter time to heat the house. It makes sense in my head, but I seriously doubt that is is a practical idea.
Along this vein of thought BP is sponsoring the BP Solar Decathlon where 20 universit teams from around the world are designing, building, and operating livable, energy-efficient, and completely solar-powered homes. In this event BP has partnered with the U.S. Department of Energy to discover cost effective, clean energy solutions for everyday living. I hope that they are able to start making the existing technologies more efficient to be able to provide these solutions to the public at large, at affordable costs.
If you have had ideas on solutions to energy problems, please feel free to share them here so that we can all help explore alternatives.
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