If you are interested in building your own solar collector, then the first thing you are going to need is proper solar energy plans that you can follow step by step. Building your own solar collector may sound like a difficult thing to do, but if you have solar energy plans that you can follow then it is really not that hard at all.

The First Step

The first step, before you even examine any solar energy plans, you need to make sure that you clearly understand the difference between solar collectors and panels. Solar collectors are what actually harvest the solar energy in the form of heat, while it is the solar panels that harvest solar energy in the form of electricity.

Another difference is that solar collectors make use of the greenhouse effect, while solar panels instead convert radiant energy into electricity and are today only really cost-effective in remote off-grid areas with a price of about $5/watt.

Materials

There are quite a few different materials that you are going to need for your solar energy plans, including: 2 rolls of 50 foot 20” aluminum flashing, 4 .060” thick 4×8 sheets of Kalwall, 20 1×4x8 pine with few or no knots, 4 1/2×4x8 CDX plywood, 4 1×4x8 sheet insulation R value 5 or better, clear silicon caulking, aluminum foil and some felt paper, 1 gallon of roofing tar, 1 gallon of oil base paint, angle iron for mounting, 16 1/4×3 lag bolts, 16 1/4×1 1/2” machine bolts with nuts and washers, 1 ¼” and 2” drywall screws, 1 pound of 1 1/2” galvanized nails with small heads, and plumbing supplies.

The actual process that will take place here will depend on what specific solar energy plans you have, however the advantages that you will gain will typically remain the same, regardless of the particular plans that you are using.

Advantages

If you have $2000 and a few weeks of labor available that you can invest into this work, then it is really going to pay off because you could save more than $50,000 in hot water and home heating costs. Solar heating is very feasible today, and the average American household consumes between 1000 and 2000 gallons of number two fuel oil per year. Efficient use of the sun’s energy could easily cut this consumption in half or even be able to eliminate it entirely even, which would obviously be just that much more ideal.

Depending on the goal being worked towards, solar energy information is available from a variety of resources. Powering an entire home or using solar energy as a supplemental energy source in a hybrid electrical system are the most common searches for solar energy information and can be found in number places, including the United States Department of Energy.

Many individuals share the idea that a need for alternative energy sources are needed before the world depletes the non-renewable fossil fuels with which every country depends. There is also solar energy information for producing power for operating vehicles, remote street lights, heating swimming pools, desalinating salt water and satellites as well as solar ponds to heat and treat water. Regardless of the application for which it is intended, solar energy information can be found that will help the goal be met.

The concept of converting the sun’s solar power into electricity has been around 1865 when the first steam-operated machine was powered by water heated with solar energy. Solar energy information surfaced during the beginning of the industrial revolution with many pointing out that building an entire economy powered by non-renewable fuel sources did not make any sense. However, the push to develop new uses for fossil fuels pushed the innovations on solar energy to the back burner.

Necessity Breeds New Solar Innovations

It was not until the oil crisis in the 1970s that a push for solar energy information was renewed and people and governments began clamoring for a new source of power, not dependent on oil. Since then many different technologies have surfaced, ironically many of the same technologies and information that was first investigated during the late 19th century. The solar energy information developed then, is still widely in use today.

New technology and manufacturing techniques have made the availability of solar energy more popular and with the new techniques prices to manufacture photovoltaic cells has fallen, making the use of solar power in homes more economical and competitive with traditional power supplies. There are many resources for solar energy information to help homeowners make an informed decision about the use of solar energy.

The use of the sun to warm water in a garden hose left in the yard has sparked solar energy information that today has people pumping water from their swimming pools into holding containers for the water to be heated by the sun before being pumped back into the pool, thereby heating the pool water quicker than when left sitting in the pool uncovered.

Solar energy is a hot topic these days, as the focus of the world turns more and more to finding ways to make use of renewable energy resources. But while some people might think that using solar energy is a new concept, the history of solar energy runs back hundreds of years. So, to better understand what people have done with solar energy in history, let’s take a look back.

1767: The Solar Cooker

One of the first new technologies to show up in the history of solar energy was the solar cooker, invented by Horace de Saussure, a Swiss naturalist, in 1767. The solar cooker is a simple device, consisting of a box with the top end transparent, and some way of reflecting extra energy into the top of the box, usually a shiny metal sheet. This heats the air in the box to temperatures of up to 300 degrees. This early invention has come into use in modern times, particularly in areas where firewood is scarce.

1860: A Solar Motor

Nearly 100 years after Saussure developed his solar cooker we come to the next step in the history of solar energy, the development of a motor that ran from solar power. The inventor, Auguste Mouchout, was a mathematics expert in France who was part of a rare breed of individual so early in the Industrial Revolution, someone who was concerned about using up fossil fuels too quickly. His idea was remarkably similar to the solar cooker, using an iron cauldron surrounded by glass to absorb and heat water using solar energy, powering a steam motor. While his invention worked well, it wasn’t as cost-effective as coal, so it didn’t catch on.

1883: The Photovoltaic Cell

Although it was observed in the 1830s that when the sun hit certain materials, a small electrical charge could result, the photovoltaic cell didn’t make its appearance in the history of solar energy until over 20 years after Mouchout’s solar-powered motor. Using selenium with a thin layer of gold, Charles Fritts made the first photovoltaic cell, which was terribly inefficient, and thus not very useful at first.

It wasn’t until later in the history of solar energy, in 1954, that Bell Laboratories discovered that silicon with certain impurities did create a practical photovoltaic cell. From that point on, the history of solar energy entered the modern age, with more innovations and more frequent improvements in the efficiency of solar energy. However, these three early inventions paved the way for the later innovations, and should be considered important in the history of solar energy.

If you are looking to find out what the various properties pertaining to steam as also water that are used in the industry are including pressure, enthalpy, temperature, entropy and specific volume as well as quality, and find that the formulae used are too complex for you to understand, you should take recourse to solar energy graphs that will help you find such properties.Two Dimensional And Constant Value Lines

Solar energy graphs are also available in more than one type with the choice lying between one dimensional and two dimensional and you may have two main types of properties in either axis, while the remaining can be shown in the form of lines showing constant values at intervals of different kinds.

Thus, it is normal to use an enthalpy-entropy solar energy graphs, otherwise known as the Molliere Diagram in which are shown constant pressure lines as well as constant temperature and specific volume lines at varying intervals. Also, solar energy graphs that depict temperature-entropy, pressure-temperature and others can be made with varying other properties depicted as constant lines.

One thing you can be sure about is that with solar energy graphs, you get rationally accurate outputs though there is need for interpolating results that may have certain minor inaccuracies, and for this software can greatly help in eliminating even these minor inaccuracies. Thus, the solar energy graphs such as the Molliere Diagrams are still much used by academics to comprehend the fundamentals and also to understand conceptions.

If you choose to use software to generate solar energy graphs, you can reap a number of benefits since you can do away with the need to have hard copy of the diagrams, and everything that you wish to see can easily is viewed on a computer screen which can be saved to the hard disk and printed whenever required. Such software is also helpful in creating diagrams interactively so that you can view a wide range of constant line properties, and which does not require any interpolation for inaccuracies as well. Also, the solar energy graphs can be made clearer using higher colors available on computer screen displays.

There are many benefits for the academicians regarding use of software to generate solar energy graphs since they help these people to explore, explain as well as investigate variations through use of just a few simple commands.

However, such software to generate solar energy graphs are not so easily available, and you may have to search high and low before you find one that will fit your needs. Once found, there is great potential for their use, and they will easily work as an alternative to printed diagrams and will help in greater conceptualization by those interested in such graphs.

Solar energy grants are the grants that are specifically used for research and study in the area of solar energy, and so obviously these solar energy grants are extremely valuable, considering how essential solar power is not only today but how much more valuable it is going to be in the future. After all, the world’s finite resources are beginning to run out, and if there were no solar energy, it is predicted that our world would either die off or go back to the Middle Ages.

There are a number of different solar energy grants which are currently in the works, and it is important to understand about these different grants, not only to understand where help is needed, particularly if you are looking to contribute, but also just so that you can be more informed and knowledgeable in general.

Department of Energy Grants

The Department of Energy’s solar energy grants can easily be considered as being some of the most important, and in particular their grants cover two distinct projects that are based on nanoscale materials, on which the researchers will collaborate. One is for generating a solar cell device to be able to produce hydrogen and the other is for using nanomaterials in order to safely store the hydrogen.

These grants are among 70 hydrogen research projects that are presently in the works here, funded through a $64 million DOE initiative that is aimed at making vehicles that are powered by hydrogen fuel cells available, practical and affordable to the consumers of the world. The research on materials and generating hydrogen from solar cells will work by focusing on the fundamental research that is needed in order to mass produce these technologies for a consumer market.

The Maryland Energy Administration is another organization that offers solar energy grants, and in particular, the Senate Bill 485, which is the Solar Energy Grant program that is sponsored by Robert Garagiola, is a program which provides funding for a portion of the overall costs that are required to install certain qualifying solar energy systems.

The incentives of this grant are as follows: solar water heating property: 20% of system costs up to a maximum grant amount of $2000, residential photovoltaic property: 20% of system costs up to a maximum grant amount of $3000, and non-residential photovoltaic property: 20% of system costs up to a maximum grant amount of $5000.

Solar energy grants are crucial to the future research and study on solar energy, which in turn will result in the survival of our planet.