Solar Power To Save Money And Solve Your Energy Problems

Yesterday I mentioned that nuclear fusion may be the best solution to our world energy needs. The worst problem with it is that it will not be ready until about the year 2020. 

We are already in trouble with climate change from the fuel we have used for energy up to now. People are starting to quarrel over the fuel we have left. We do not have enough fuel to make energy for all of the people who want to use it now.

We will need to look elsewhere for fuel sources to keep us going until we have fusion working for our power needs.

One of the obvious places to look for energy is solar energy. We already know how to use solar energy. 

There are problems with solar energy, however. One of the problems with solar energy is that we don't have very efficient ways to use it yet. We have very big solar energy projects going in many places in the world. So far, none of them produce a very large percentage of the world's energy needs.

Another problem with solar energy is that it takes a lot of materials and those materials are expensive. For an individual home-sized solar power project, the investment usually takes years to begin to pay for the investment to build it.

Many people can not afford to invest in an expensive solar system and then wait a long time to get their money back from it. 

I believe that solar power used in simple ways can pay for the investment in it much faster than for whole electrical systems to run an entire home full of appliances. 

I have built my own solar ovens and cooked on them all summer. I lived in a temperate zone when I did that. In that temperate zone, cooking on my solar oven was not practical during the winter. 

Since that time I have discovered Fresnel lenses. They can greatly increase the heat  in a solar oven. 

I live in a cold climate now and solar ovens using techniques besides Fresnel lenses is not practical for most of the year. 

Solar ovens with Fresnel lenses can give us a partial solution to energy needs for now. I believe the Fresnel lenses can help with other solar energy needs as well. I have experimented with them a little. I expect that I will tell you about that in later posts.