My attraction to renewable energy systems comes from the
fact that I am preparing to construct a house from scratch
in the near future. As a new build it will give me a clean
slate to work with in which I would like to include as much
renewable energy technology as I can. I would like to
construct an off the grid house.
As I will be building the house from scratch I will be able
to incorporate the full spectrum of renewable energy in the
design of the house from the low-tech to the high-tech.
Passive energy is a "low-tech" approach. When constructing
or remodeling a house, a bit of advance planning will yield
a considerable amount of possibilities to use solar energy
to both heat of cool your home.
The running costs of a building can be reduced if the
reliance on mechanical or electrical heating, cooling and
lighting can be reduced.
Passive solar energy cannot be tacked on to a building.
Passive solar energy is not an addition to a house that can
be added later or at the end of the building process. It is
therefore essential to consider the possibilities for
passive solar energy right from the start of the building
process i.e. at the planning stages.
Passive solar energy system must be incorporated into and
form an integral part of an energy efficient building and
landscape.
The field of passive solar energy involves building design
and the placement of appropriate building components to
make the best use of sunlight for day lighting, passive
heating and/or passive cooling. Besides saving energy, a
primary benefit of passive solar is improved comfort for
the occupants.
Passive solar energy is a resource that does not require
machinery. Buildings can, if designed correctly, use
daylight throughout the year to capture the sun's heat
during the winter months and minimize it during the summer.
Buildings designed in such a way utilize passive solar
energy to help heat, cool, or light them.
The use of passive solar design, better insulation, and
more efficient appliances could reduce your energy
requirements by a considerable amount. The amount of
energy saved will naturally vary on the architectural
design of the house, the landscaping surrounding it, and
the efficiency of the appliances including the illumination.
Many passive solar heating design features also provide day
lighting. The use of natural sunlight to light up or
brighten a building's interior is known as day lighting.
An open floor plan allows the light to reach throughout the
building. This can result in substantial savings on
electric bills, and not only provides a higher quality of
light, but improves productivity and health. Combining
natural day lighting with natural ventilation strategies
can considerably reduce energy consumption, making a
significant contribution to a sustainable building design.
The most common building component used in passive solar
energy is the windows. Over a year, most windows loose more
energy than they gain. Advanced windows systems can
actually be net energy suppliers, with better net annual
energy performance than the most tightly insulated wall.
Advanced windows systems use a combination of double or
triple glazings, low-emissive coatings, argon or krypton
gas fill, and transparent insulation. Selecting advanced
windows and orienting most of them to face towards the
equator can significantly reduce the annual heating load.
Studies have shown that houses designed using such passive
solar concepts can require less than half the heating
energy of the same house using conventional windows with
random window orientation.
In winter, when the external temperature cools down in the
evening, the thermal mass will radiate that absorbed heat
into the rooms. Proper design and selection of shading
devices can also result in reduced cooling loads in the
summer. Apart from shading devices a passive solar cooling
device such as the thermal chimney can be used to help cool
down a house. It is designed like a smoke chimney to vent
hot air from the house out through the roof.
You can also build small additions to your home, designed
to maximize your homes solar intake, referred to as sun
rooms or conservatories, to capture more more solar energy.
If the ventilation for these additions is properly designed
the incoming energy not only provide heat to the sun room
itself, but can be extended via convection or forced air
systems to help heat the rest of your home.
A significant challenge for the next generation of modern
dwellings is the integration of advanced window
technologies, superior day lighting and passive solar
heating for buildings in cold climates. New technology
developments, in particular with advanced windows and
airtight envelopes, make many older passive solar
"rules-of-thumb" obsolete, and require the use of energy
performance analysis tools.
The use of environmental modelling, a new and invaluable
design tool that provides a detailed computer analysis of
the internal environment with predictions of temperature,
airflow, CO2 concentrations and daylight levels will help
in designing more energy efficient houses.
With a bit of planning, passive solar energy design can
reduce your energy requirements which also reduces the
amount of energy your micro-solar and wind power plant has
to produce.
----------------------------------------------------
Alain Prudhomme writes about the issues surrounding the
micro-generation of renewable energy for homes as well as
on the contentious and controversial issues surrounding
global warming and climate change. You can find more
resources at http://www.renewablehomeenergysolutions.com
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