Make the Most of Sunshine

The best things in life are free. Never has this old saw been truer than in the case of sunshine.
Every day, even on cloudy days, the sun puts out 89,000 TW of solar power into the earth's atmosphere.  By comparison, global energy consumption in 2004 was 15 TW (TW is the SI unit for terawatts, or 1012 Watts). Now, that's a lot of energy - more than we need - sitting there just begging to be used. In some ways, you wonder what we're doing with fossil-fuel generated electricity.

Well, the short answer to why we don't use more solar energy is because it's harder to capture solar energy so it can be used. What's more, a good proportion of the solar energy reaching the planet's surface goes into heating the oceans and driving the weather patterns around the globe. And more sunshine goes into helping plants grow, as sunlight is essential for the process of photosynthesis, by which plants create nutrients.
But we can all make use of the sunshine as a form of sustainable energy. Methods for using sunlight range from simple to complicated. But we should all be able to take advantage of sunlight for some of our energy needs, as it is a fully sustainable energy source.

The most basic way to make use of sunshine is as a source of light and heating. It often surprises me how many people carefully close the curtains during the daytime to "protect" their furniture from fading and then have to turn on lights and heaters. Open the curtains and let the sunshine in - it's time to put an end to the Victorian passion for gloom and intense colours that are prone to fading. What's more, you'll be astonished how sunshine lifts your mood. If privacy is an issue, then café curtains or net curtains will keep prying eyes out and let the sunlight in.

If you're building a new house, then you should keep the sun in mind just as much as the people who built Stonehenge did. It's best to site rooms that don't need as much light (toilets, bathrooms and laundries) on the sunless side of the house (that's the north side in the Northern Hemisphere) and put as many of the lived-in rooms on the sunny southern side - having the lounge or family room with good sunshine is a must! Build for orientation to the sun, not orientation to the street.

Sunshine can also be used for drying the laundry. Running an electric clothes dryer can be a major consumer of electricity in most domestic power bills. The notorious vagaries of the English climate mean that on many days of the year it's not suitable to dry all your laundry outside on a traditional washing line, but a drying rack can easily be placed under cover where the sunshine can fall on it. Every house has somewhere suitable, whether it's a corner of a bedroom or a covered porch.

One idea that is catching on rapidly is using solar power to heat domestic water. Even in the coldest and drabbest of climates, you can get enough sunshine to meet your daily hot water needs. For solar water heating, a piping arrangement is installed on your roof at the right angle and orientation to catch the sun when it is strongest. This arrangement contains materials that absorb and trap the heat around a water pipe which feeds into your hot water tank. Convection makes sure that all the water in your hot water tank is heated properly. The initial installation cost will be paid off by savings in your electricity bill before long!

And some people go all the way and live completely off the grid with all their energy needs supplied by solar and other sources. Living off the grid requires the use of solar battery panels installed on the roof to covert solar energy to electricity. One quick word of caution is needed here if you are considering living off the grid:  make sure you have the right type of deep cycle battery (the place the electricity is "stored" after conversion from sunlight). Some deep cycle batteries are designed for lower usage and are suitable for caravans and houseboats. Others are designed for full domestic use, so make sure that you get the right type to ensure your energy needs are met.