There is a two-fold benefit for utilizing free energy – saving money on utility bills and saving the environment. But what is it that I’m talking about here? Some sort of perpetual motion machine, perhaps? No, of course not – I mean extracting energy from free sources such as the sun through the use of photovoltaic cells (“solar panels”), taking geothermal energy from the ground and converting it into usable electricity and heating, and so on and so forth. So, how are some of these accomplished? Let’s go over some info on this…
Well, first off… we can use the power of the sun, as we all know, to extract free energy, saving tons in energy expenses. The best thing about this is the times we live in today – it used to be, back in the early seventies when this technology was first becoming popularized, that it was wildly expensive to invest in such energy conservation systems. An array of panels on a solar home roof could cost many thousands of dollars just to power most of the appliances in a small home, which resulted in its paying for itself only after so many years later. It did seem cost-effective if the topic of time was overlooked.
Nowadays, it’s not only a lot less expensive to invest in this kind of energy conservation efficiency, but the energy output of solar panels has vastly increased over the many years of development since solar energy’s initial burst of popularity decades ago. This type of free energy, saving the environment by not burning fossil fuels, is now being undertaken even by do-it-yourselfers who spend little more than one to two hundred dollars on parts, to make a single two by five foot solar panel which can by itself power a home PC, and entertainment center, and an air-conditioner all from one panel, as a weekend project. Just three or four of these could provide enough power for a small home and at just a tiny fraction of the cost that it used to be.
Another example of free energy saving the environment and utility bill expense is geothermal energy. Pipes driven into the ground under a house’s foundation which have water coursing through them takes the heat from the ground that transfers to the water and courses it through heat exchangers and heat pump electricity generators. A system like this can also be used in place of a hot water heater in some cases, and this is just another example of how we can use what the environment already provides for us so freely for our power, and never rely on burning fossil fuels again. This is not only a great way to save on expenses, but to reduce the impact we continue to have on our environment every day.
