Originally published August 15 2005
Solar-powered home shows how powerful solar energy can be
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
A home situated in the rocky mountains is powered 99 percent by solar power and only consumes about $5 per month in electricity.
At 7,100 feet up in the Rocky Mountains, where the temperatures can hit 40 below, Amory Lovins has built a home that shows just how powerful solar energy can be.
He says the house is 99 percent passive-solar heated, saves 99 percent of its water-heating energy, and consumes about $5 a month worth of electricity.
Fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas are the organic byproduct of plants and animals that derived their energy millions of year ago from the sun. Wind and hydro power rely on the motion of air and water created by the sun's impact on the earth's climate.
Direct solar energy is also useful in various forms: passive-solar building techniques can dramatically reduce energy consumption by cutting heating costs in winter and cooling costs in summer.
The physics of turning sunlight into electricity has been known for over 100 years.
But it wasn't until the 1950s that researchers developed the first commercially viable solar cells -- a type of semiconductor that converts light into electricity.
During the 1960s, the space program drove further advances in boosting the capacity and reducing the cost of making solar panels.
More recently, thanks to advances in semiconductor manufacturing, the cost of producing solar cells continues to fall.
Despite its appeal --- free, plentiful, pollution-free electricity wherever and whenever the sun is shining ---the promise of solar energy remains largely unfulfilled.
"The bottom line is we need pretty substantial technical breakthroughs in solar to move it from a technology that's growing rapidly -- but is probably going to be a pretty niche technology -- to a technology that can really contribute substantial fractions of our energy supply," said Ryan Wiser, a scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who specializes in the economics of renewable energy.
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