The cost of a solar system to power or heat your home can run anywhere from a few thousand dollars to $50,000 or more. The wide range of investment required is the result of many factors. The amount of sunlight received in different areas varies considerably. Some places like Santa Fe, New Mexico get sunshine [...]

Solar power, particularly when it’s used to provide home electricity needs, may seem like a relatively recent invention. And it’s true that large, cost-effective panels that form the core of most systems have only been in use for about that past 30 years. But the underlying method they employ goes back to 1839, when it [...]

The standard solar power system used to provide electricity today consists chiefly of two components: PV (photovoltaic) panels and a storage system. The PV (photovoltaic) panels generate the electricity. A storage system stores any excess for later use when there isn’t enough sunlight to power all your needs. Batteries That storage system is usually in [...]

The idea of heating your home with the sun is hardly new. Since the dawn of humankind the sun has been used to provide needed warmth. But modern technology has completely transformed the way that can be done, even from the methods used a few generations ago. In the 1920s some municipalities supplied hot water [...]

Human use of the sun’s energy may seem like a recent phenomenon. But, in fact, solar energy has been in use in various forms for thousands of years. Apart from the obvious fact that the sun provides the energy for plants to grow that feed us, there are more technological uses that go back millennia. [...]

Using the energy from the sun to generate electricity gets a lot of press. But there are many other applications for solar power. One of the most important is for treating water. Many countries around the world have impure water that causes diarrhea, typhus and other medical problems. The same is true of certain areas [...]

When most people think of solar power they imagine large, dark blue panels supplying electricity to a home or business. And that’s certainly one very popular application. But there are other ways to harness the energy of the sun. Solar heating is one, and its roots actually go much further back than the use of [...]

Solar power technology has been around in some form or another for thousands of years. Even many modern solar device designs are now decades old. Yet, they have not fulfilled the promise that many hoped. Why? Two reasons: efficiency and cost. Of the approximately 1,000 watts per square meter of sunlight power falling on the [...]

Though the claims of enthusiasts are sometimes overstated, it’s still true that solar power and alternative energy forms are viable and valuable. They’re low-pollution generating, even accounting for manufacturing effects to make the components. They are, in principle, inexhaustible sources of energy. And, those forms of energy don’t require looking to unstable countries to supply [...]

The image of a large, dark-blue panel atop a rooftop supplying solar-powered electricity is now familiar. Though relatively few homes have them, thousands of magazine stories have been written over the past 30 years accompanied by photos depicting them. Because of their relative rarity, such systems have become regarded as ‘the wave of the future’, [...]