With rising energy costs and massive stress on our electrical grids, solar is gaining in popularity. Not everyone realizes you can heat your home without buying big panel systems.

Heating Your Home With Solar, But Without Panels – Gain

You can use solar energy to heat your home through a concept known as gain. While you may associate panel systems with any mention of solar power, they are not a component of this approach. Of course, this makes the installation a heck of a lot cheap than going with traditional panel systems.

Solar gain is a concept that has been with us for much of the history of mankind. Earlier civilizations obviously didn’t have electricity. To keep structures warmed, they learned to use the heat produced by sunlight. It is fairly humorous when archeologists marvel at the fact ancient structures are always oriented to the sun. If they new anything about solar gain, they would realize the structures were being used to produce thermal heating through masonry, openings and so on. Regardless, these early civilizations were the first to develop and implement solar gain heating.

The simplest way to explain solar gain is with a practical example. Assume it is summer time and your car is parked in the driveway with the windows rolled up. What happens when you open the door to get in? A massive blast of heat comes out. If you have black seats like I do, you also hop around like a fool when you sit down on the black surface. Your car is hot because it has acted as a platform for solar gain. The sun came in the windows, heated up surfaces in the car and raised the temperature. Since most vehicles are poorly ventilated, the heat reached unbearable levels because it couldn’t escape quickly enough. This is solar gain in a nutshell, a methodology that can be applied to your home.

With solar gain heating, the idea is to maximize sun penetration into the home, covert the sunlight into heat, and circulate it through the home. To accomplish this, one typically puts windows on the south side of the home to capture as much sunlight as possible. Thermal storage materials, such as masonry, are placed below the windows to capture and store heat for after the sun goes down. The heat from the sun is circulated throughout the house throughout the day and evening until the stored amount is exhausted. Yes, it works in winter.

Solar gain is an ancient and highly effective method for heating your home. If it sounds interesting to you, visit a solar site to find out the specifics.

Rick Chapo is with SolarCompanies.com, a directory of solar energy companies. Visit us to read more articles on solar power and renewable energy.

The enormous consequences of global warming are upon us and the time has come to take corrective measures to set it right. The primary reasons for the incidence of global warming are manifold and one of them is the unprecedented use of widespread natural fuels which cannot be replenished. They give out enormous amounts of pollutants which are instrumental in harming the atmosphere of the earth leading to the rise in temperature of the same. Within a few years, the temperature of the earth would have increased by almost 2 degrees which would lead to mass extinction of many species of flora and fauna. So what can we do to put a stop to this or at least slow down the process?

The answer is use of solar power for our electricity purposes. This is a comparatively new method which is being used nowadays to harness the power of the sun to light up our houses, offices and the like. It basically involves the process of taking the power of the sun and converting it into energy which can be used for myriad purposes. The advantage of this method is that it gives out clean energy which does not add up to the woes of the already troubled atmosphere. There are a few solar energy methods which are used regularly by nations. Among them, primary are Photovoltaic Solar Energy, Indirect Solar Heating and Solar Powered Turbines.

The method of using solar energy is helpful in a number of ways. Apart from the obvious advantage that it provides clean energy, it is also cheaper than other fuels and also can be produced in large amounts to suit every nation’s needs. This is a great alternative to fossil fuels which are becoming increasingly scarce and costlier by the minute. A lot of money and time is being devoted to the methods of harvesting solar energy nowadays.