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SOLAR HOME SYSTEMS
source: www.ucsusa.org/clean_
energy/renewable_energy/page.cfm?
pageID=79
www.jxj.com/magsandj/
rew/2003_04/lessons.html
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One simple, obvious use of sunlight is to light our buildings. If properly designed, buildings can capture the sun's heat in the winter and avoid it in the summer, while using daylight year round…- It has been estimated that residential and commercial buildings account for 1/3 of US energy use (about 40% in Europe), including the energy used to make the electricity used in buildings. Solar design, better insulation, and more efficient appliances could reduce this demand by 60 to 80%.
Some buildings have active systems to gather and store solar energy:
- solar collectors sit on the rooftops of buildings to collect solar energy for space heating, water heating, and space cooling.
- In Cyprus, over 90% of homes have solar water heaters.
Roughly 400 million households, or 40% of the population of developing countries, do not have access to electricity…- An estimated 1.1 million solar home systems and solar lanterns exist in rural areas of developing countries, although an estimated 10-20% are no longer operational.
- Most installations are individual household systems, but some serve public buildings such as schools, health clinics and community centres - with thousands of such applications in some countries.
- The largest existing markets for solar home systems are India (500,000), China (150,000), Kenya (120,000), Morocco (80,000), Mexico (80,000) and South Africa (50,000).
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