No doubt youve heard plenty about solar power but always thought it was too expensive, aside from minor uses in the now popular garden lighting systems. However, with fuel prices climbing and solar cells becoming more reasonable, adding solar power to your home is a great, long term solution to high energy bills.

That isnt to say theyre cheap. Before rebates, it typically takes 12 or more years for a homeowner to make their investment in solar panels back. Thats much longer than the average person is willing to wait. However, many states now offer rebates, so the final cost to the homeowner is much less than it use to be. The rebates vary from state to state, so its impossible to say how much of an impact they have overall. There may also be federal incentives.

Solar panels are also steadily becoming more efficient. They produce more energy than they used to. They require relatively little maintenance, many of which you may be able to do yourself. This helps to make them very cost effective.

Solar energy isnt just for making electricity. You can use it heat the water for your swimming pool or heat your home. There are many options available for those who are interesting in building an energy efficient home without sacrificing comfort.

Solar power is much, much cheaper than it used to be, as prices have fallen by 90% since the 1970s. That doesnt make it cheap – yet! – to install enough photovoltaic cells to power a house, but in some areas the incentives given to install solar cells cuts the overall cost to the homeowner about in half.

To decide if solar energy is right for you, take some basic figures into consideration.

Check your energy consumption. You need to know how big a system you will need to power your home. Make sure you consider your highest consumption levels and the possibility that it will grow somewhat.

Find out how much a photovoltaic system to meet your need will cost you. The size will depend both on your energy need and on the available sunlight (solar resource) in your area.

Find out what rebates and incentives are available to you to help decrease your costs.

Consider whether your system will be on the grid or off. On the grid has the advantage that you can sell when you have an excess and buy electricity when you dont have enough, while with an off the grid system you have a battery to store your excess.

Consider what the environmental benefits are worth to you. This is a personal factor rather than a direct economic one. It wont save you money, but knowing that youre contributing a little less to pollution might change how you feel about the expense.

Choosing to use solar power in your home is an investment you can appreciate on many levels. Over a number of years it will save you money as you generate environmentally friendly energy. Its not cheap to get started, but when you combine the environmental benefits with decreasing your reliance on fuel costs you can certainly appreciate the possibilities.

The words solar cooling sure sound like a contradiction, but its nonetheless true that the same solar energy that provides heat in winter can also give a lot of cooling in the summer months.

There have been quite a number of passive cooling systems developed and tested in recent times. They function quite simplythere is a coolant that absorbs heat and then dispels it outside. Even a water tank or water-contained trough on the roof can act as a coolant, absorbing heat from the house and then dissipating it while it automatically evaporates under the sun.

Apart from these simple methods, there are also some passive solar cooling systems which are more sophisticated and a bit more complex. They have a solar collector which remains shaded through the day. And the storage medium in it gathers all the heat during daytime to release it later after sundown. At night, the shade of the solar collector is removed to bring it in direct contact with the cool night air and thus enabling it to dispel the collected heat.

For shading the solar collector, a retractile sunblind can be put up or an extended shade can be hung over. As this arrangement isnt permanent and will change to just the opposite in the winter season, it is imperative that you keep the shade in a way that will help you to expose the collector easily to the sun as and when required.

For operating the conventional air conditioners, solar panels can be one fine option. As you perhaps already know, days when the heat remains the highest, are the best times for producing electricity by means of photovoltaic cells. So if you use solar panels to yield enough electricity, you can use your air conditioner totally free of cost.

Yet another highly potential option is solar cooling which does not depend on technology. History holds it that the Romans had a fine system of using running water to cool the walls of their houses. As you can guess, the water evaporates under the sun, thereby dissipating heat and soothing the inner temperatures. This same arrangement can be put up at your houseon the walls and even on rooftops.

To the majority of households, cooling and heating are two primary concerns in their yearly expenses. Hence the usage of solar energy to both heat and cool the house can really help your budget breathe and can be ecological too. It is always a positive move to stop using fossil fuels for heating and cooling, because these are deterrent to a clean and healthy environment.

In many states, homeowners and businesses can now sell solar panel energy to utilities. Doing so requires an interconnection agreement with your local utility.

Lowering Your Utility Bill

In a majority of states, homeowners using solar can take advantage of a concept known as net metering. Net metering essentially refers to the act of selling excess power produced by your solar panels to the local utility. While you are at work during the day, the energy produced by panels is fed directly back to the utility [your meter runs backwards] and then you use utility energy as you need it in the evening. The utility company pays you at the same rate per watt as what it charges you, thus creating a net metering situation. Practically speaking, it is a tremendous way to slash or eliminate your electrical bill.

If you intend to sell electricity to the utility company, you cant just do it. Instead, you must get and sign an interconnection agreement with it. While the name can change from utility to utility, this agreement basically lays out the ground rules on how the process will work. Lets take a closer look.

Federal and state laws require utility companies to supply you with standard interconnection agreements. The agreement specifies the terms and conditions under which your system will be connected to the utility grid. These can include your obligation to get any required permits, maintain homeowners insurance and meet certain connection specifications.

Sometimes set apart as a separate document, the agreement will also include the specifics related to the sale and purchase of power by each of you. Instead of installing multiple meters to asses the transfer of power, most utilities will simply let the existing utility meter run forward when you are drawing energy from the grid and backward when you are supplying energy to it.

If you supply more energy than you use in a month, must the utility company send you a check? Unfortunately, net metering laws do not require the utilities to do so. Instead, the company will credit the monetary equivalent of the excess generation to the next months electrical bill until you eventually use it during a cloudy or rainy month.

Interconnect agreements are fairly standardized agreements that shouldnt cause you much concern. Just make sure you get one before hooking up to the local utility.

If you dont live in Southern England, chances are that you might not have noticed the water shortage problem in the UK, but you might have heard of the hosepipe ban and were left puzzled by Londons Mayor Ken Livingstone plea to Londoners to stop flushing the lavatory after relieving themselves! Two unusually dry winters have left the reservoirs only about half full in Southern England. In the Thames water region, around London, there has been less than 70% of the rainfall that was expected since November 2004.

The British are probably unaware that Londoners use an average of 165 litres of water every day, higher than the national average of 150 litres and about one-third higher than other European cities.

These must be depressing figures for any British household, but you dont have to panic yet! By educating yourself about conserving water in simple ways, you can breathe easy and perhaps even use a hose or sprinkler to water your garden after all!

In this article, well debate the big questiondoes it takes less water to take a shower or have a bath?

First of all, lets take a look at a few facts:

# A full bathtub holds approximately 140 litres of water
# Standard shower heads dispense 20-60 litres of water per minute
# Shower heads with flow restrictors dispense 10-15 litres of water per minute

An average bath requires 100 to 200 litres of water. Depending on your showerhead and whether it has a flow restrictor in it and how long you shower, the answer could oscillate either towards shower or bath. The average shower of four minutes with an old showerhead uses 80 litres of water. With a low-flow showerhead, only 40 litres of water is used.

If your house was constructed before 1992, chances are your showerheads force out about 20 litres of water per minute. Multiply this by the number of minutes you are in the shower and the litres add up fast!

If youd like to test the amount of water wasted yourself, heres an experiment you could try at home. Put the plug in the bathtub next time you take a shower (but not a stand-alone shower as you might spill over the lower shower wall). After you’ve showered, examine how much the tub filled up. If there is less water than you would usually have in a bath, then you will probably save money by taking a shower instead of a bath.

Although the chances of the contrary happening are unheard of, if it is the case for you, then in addition to the enjoyment you get in a bath, there is more good news for you.

A good, long soak in a bath can renew the spirit. Hydrotherapy, which loosely translated means rejuvenation by water, enables bathers to revitalize themselves. Some modern systems even contain air jets that have been strategically placed to target the bodys pressure points, relieving tension and stress. Bathers can also enjoy the benefit of chromatherapy, which uses coloured light in much the same way aromatherapy uses scent to stimulate different psychological and physical responses.

Bath time for a young family can be an important playtime and social occasion to be shared with other family members. A number of people find baths a calming way to relax in today’s fast paced stressful life. Herbs and essential oils soothe aching muscles, tense nerves, and skin irritations; soften the skin; and ensure a good complexion.

The Environment Agency, however, would recommend short showers, not baths. Based on its latest research, it proclaims that a 5-minute shower uses about a third of the water of a bath and can save 50 litres every time.

The time taken to take a shower is not the sole variable though. As previously mentioned, water consumed is also dependent on the type of shower you use. Power showers can use more water than a bath in less than 5 minutes! Low-flow showerheads deliver 10 litres of water or less per minute and are relatively inexpensive. Older showerheads use 20 to 30 litres of water per minute.

If you still believe that a shower cannot equal the gratification of a bath, then it is recommended to partially fill your bath in order to use less water. That option might seem better if you consider the plight of sailors aboard ships. Due to lack of fresh water aboard ships, sailors were taught to get wet, turn off the water, soap and scrub, and then briefly turn the water on to rinse. Lets hope British residents dont suffer the same fate in a few years.