Dan Chiras - Solar Home Heating Basics: A Green Energy Guide

Lets face it: times are changing. And, by most measures, theyre not changing for the better. Ever-increasing levels of carbon dioxide are driving Earths climate into a frenzy of pernicious and costly changes. Ever-more-violent hurricanes and a steep increase in the number of devastating tornados and floods, as well as droughts, crop failures, raging forest fires, spreading deserts, and the expansion of insect-borne diseases all due to human-fostered climate change are costing humankind dearly in human lives and dollars.

Meanwhile, energy demand is skyrocketing. Because much of the worlds energy currently derives from burning fossil fuels, costly climate disruptions are bound to escalate. The price tag of our dependence some say our addiction to fossil fuels is bound to reach epic proportions, unless we do something dramatic, and very soon.

In addition to the serious problems created by climate changes, the United States and other countries are quickly depleting their limited reserves of natural gas used for heating our homes and water. Although ads that run on US television stations promise an abundance of natural gas associated with domestic shale reserves, the ads fail to note that these huge deposits of natural gas are located in extremely deep shale deposits in the eastern United States and that extracting this resource will be extremely expensive, if not impossible.

And then theres the turmoil in the Middle East as the United States and some of its staunch allies attempt to secure energy resources in a region in which weve burned way too many bridges and where true friends are few and far between. The United States will likely continue to wage exceedingly expensive wars in the Middle East to secure the fuels required by our often recklessly wasteful energy-hungry society.

But all the news is not grim. There is a bit of good news that deserves attention: Slowly but surely, many nations are turning to clean, affordable, and renewable energy supplies even the United States. The two darlings of renewable energy are solar electricity and wind energy (Figures 1-1a and b).

Large commercial wind farms and solar arrays are popping up like daisies in a summer meadow. These new renewable energy sources provide enormous amounts of electricity to power our future.

Despite the monumental importance of the shift to wind and solar electricity, reliance on these clean renewable resources wont solve a fundamental need facing many nations, namely, a carbon-free means of providing heat to homes and other build ings and not just new homes and office buildings but the millions upon millions of existing homes, condos, townhouses, apartments, copy shops, grocery stores, schools, businesses, and the like.

Fact of the matter is, few buildings are currently heated with electricity. Electricity is too costly. Natural gas is a much more efficient means of heating, so most buildings in the United States and Canada are currently heated with natural gas.

Some proponents of solar- and wind-powered electricity argue that we could use the electricity generated from large commercial solar systems and massive wind farms to heat our homes and offices, but electric heating systems consume enormous quantities of electricity to get the job done, and are the least efficient means of heating buildings, bar none.