Fluorescent Efficiency From The Energy Superstore

US Oil

The election of 2008 is an important one, and with the state of our country’s troubled economy everyone needs to make an educated choice. Don’t trust the television ads: they are ALL biased.

That being said, most Internet articles will be biased, and this one is a little too. I will do my best to talk about the candidates, their plans for the energy crisis, and their views on the future of US oil dependence.

As we all know, our country is in a recession. With the recent drop in the stock market and the rising price of oil, the future is not looking too bright. As much as we may deny it, we all know the cause of our current economic state is partially due to oil.

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Researchers have created a new material that overcomes two of the major obstacles to solar power: it absorbs all the energy contained in sunlight, and generates electrons in a way that makes them easier to capture.

Solar Panels

Hybrid Solar Materials

Ohio State University chemists and their colleagues combined electrically conductive plastic with metals including molybdenum and titanium to create the hybrid material.

In a study published in the current issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), distinguished University Professor and Chair of the Department of Chemistry, Malcolm Chisholm explained, “There are other such hybrids out there, but the advantage of our material is that we can cover the entire range of the solar spectrum.”

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With oil prices increasing and signs of climate change becoming ever more noticeable, there is much interest these days in alternative fuel sources. On example of such an alternative fuel is hydrogen.

What Experts Know About Hydrogen Power

Hydrogen Fuel Cell

You may think of hydrogen as a fuel source, like gasoline, but it is actually more of an energy storage solution, like a battery. This is because there are not reserves of existing hydrogen that can be mined from the earth. Hydrogen must therefore be produced using another energy source before it can be used. This may make hydrogen sound less useful as a fuel, but energy storage is actually a very important problem.

An Energy Storage Solution

Many clean alternatives for generating power at power stations such as solar and wind are being developed, but without storage solutions this energy cannot be used in places like your car where it must be portable. While batteries can be used for storage, they can be expensive and harmful to the environment. It may be possible to develop a cleaner and less expensive solution using hydrogen.

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Natural Gas

Millions of years ago, the remains of plants and animals decayed and built up in thick layers. This decayed matter from plants and animals is called organic material — it was once alive. Over time, the mud and soil changed to rock, covered the organic material and trapped it beneath the rock.

Pressure and heat changed some of this organic material into coal, some into oil (petroleum), and some into natural gas — tiny bubbles of odorless gas. The main ingredient in natural gas is methane, a gas (or compound) composed of one carbon atom and four hydrogen atoms.

In some places, gas escapes from small gaps in the rocks into the air; then, if there is enough activation energy from lightning or a fire, it burns. When people first saw the flames, they experimented with them and learned they could use them for heat and light.

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Energy Savings Calculator

Here is a neat little tool that is rigged up over at the Energy Superstore. Plug in your numbers and see how much you can save by switching from incandescent lighting to compact fluorescent lighting.

Here is the link to the Energy Superstore’s Advanced Energy Savings Calculator.

One of our recent clients plugged in her numbers for the weekly household usage of 5 lamps in her upstairs and downstairs. By switching to compact fluorescent screw-ins, she will be saving 436.8 kWh per year with a return on investment of 163.7%.

So our question to you is this: when it is time to replace your light bulbs why not just pick up compact fluorescent bulbs instead of incandescent, and save yourself hundreds or thousands of dollars a year?

Here’s that link one more time: Advanced Energy Savings Calculator.

Nuclear Power Plant

There are over 400 nuclear power reactors that are up and running on the planet, and believe it or not, the number is growing. The whole process of converting uranium into nuclear power is complex, but it all starts off with a mining operation to extract uranium ore. Believe it or not, uranium is not hard to find, it is actually a pretty common element, more common than gold.

Many people don’t realize that our own body houses trace amounts of uranium! Canada’s actually taken advantage of this relatively abundant resource and is so far the number one uranium producer in the world.

Reasons to Avoid Nuclear Power

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