Like most things in life, money is the first and largest reason to go with solar power. Face it, energy bills are expensive and solar energy is the best answer to saving money on those bills, either by eliminating them entirely or by taking a huge bite out of them.

There are a couple of options in going solar, you can go partially solar and use solar energy for certain aspects like heating or your hot water heater. This will save you some money on your power bill. However, you can take all of your power needs away from the local electric company – go off the grid, as they say, and save a fortune – you could actually sell power back to them.

Another great advantage of solar power is that it can be inexpensive to set up. Anyone who can do a little DIY can build a homemade power system, such as a solar powered generator for a few hundred dollars. This alone can provide enough power to heat your water.

With the right set of instructions just about anyone can put together a solar powered generator for their own use. Then they could build a series of solar panels and tie them together to create enough energy to power their house or aspects of their home such as heating.

Building it yourself is another savings in itself. If you paid for someone to build your solar generator you would know how expensive labor is – that is why solar energy is considered expensive. People don’t think they can build them but they can. It’s easily done with the right information.

So, you used what you know to build a generator and you’ve saved money in the process. What are you going to use it for? Another advantage to solar power is that you can use it for your home or your business’ power needs.

You can use your solar panels and solar generator to run your home. From your heating system to your appliances if it needs electricity you can run it on solar energy. You can power part of your home with solar energy or you can run your entire home on solar energy, the choice is yours. You can use a portable solar energy generator as a backup power source or for camping. There are multitudes of ways to use solar power.

If you can save a good deal of money making your home solar powered imagine the savings a business or office could potentially see. Computers and servers eat up massive amounts of power. Adding solar panels to power them or to power the heating and air of an office building translates to thousands of dollars in savings over a year.

Knowing the main advantages to using solar energy makes it easy to decide to switch. You don’t have to take the plunge all at once. Start small and work your way into a solar powered house over time. You’ll be glad you did and so will the Earth.

If you are interested in learning more about DIY wind and solar powered systems then I publish various articles, guides and reviews on this subject. I highly recommend your read my Earth4Energy Review to find out what you expect to gain with a homemade energy system.

Earth4Energy Solar energy home kit: The Solar Panel

Right at the heart of your solar energy home kit is the solar panel. Solar panels come in various shapes and sizes so the choice is yours. The construction of the solar panel is very intricate but you basically have a choice of two materials available either

• Crystalline silicon solar panels

• Amorphous silicon solar panels.

The solar panels function is to collect the energy of the suns rays. As the suns energy is absorbed by the solar panel, the energy causes a movement of electrons from the atoms creating a direct current flow. To convert the direct current produced into user friendly alternating current an invertor is used

Finding a location for your earth4energy solar energy kit

Pay particular attention to the location of the solar panels to ensure maximum efficiency from your solar energy home kit. The most desirable place to fit your solar panels is a location that is going to get lots of direct sunlight throughout the day, as the more sun reaches the solar panels, the more solar energy you are going to be creating. The quality of build of the solar panel will determine its overall efficiency in terms of electricity production.

As you can see the solar energy home kit is a very simple construction. The earth4energy system explains clearly how to build your own solar energy home kit for under $200s. As well as the clear and precise instructions provided by earth4energy system you also receive a full series of step by step videos making the construction process a synch. To save 80% on your energy bills or eliminate your bills entirely with a solar energy home kit checkout our build your own solar energy panels review

1. First, think about paper. Buy the recycled paper and products. Not sure how to tell? Just take a look at the pacage and it will show if it’s recycled or not.

2. Try hunting for treasures at yard sales or resale shops instead of purchasing new furniture. Or if you have time, just give your old stuff a face lift! Got creative.

3. When you leave the office for the day, instead of just turning everything off, try unplugging everything. It will save energy in the long run.

4. Try arranging your office place, so you don’t need to turn on any lights during the day. Have your desk next to a window so Mother Nature can provide the light!

5. Instead of printing office memos, try sending co-workers an email instead. That goes for employees manuals as well, if possible, have employees read the manuals online to keep from using paper.

6. Make a good habit to recycle everything in your life. Keep a bin where other employees can pitch in as well. You can recycle everything in office, like fax paper, envelopes or junk mail. You can recycle your pc and equipment in your office. Check with your local colleges and schools; they might be able to use them in classroom.

7. When possible, try getting to work by using public transportation, carpooling or riding a folding electric bike or scooter. Walk if you live not very far,it helps the environment ,and also helps you getting more healthy!

8. When you clean the office, be sure to use nontoxic cleaning products and brighten up your office with plants. Not only are they pretty, but they actually absorb indoor toxins!

9. If you have a kitchen area at the office, bring your own dishes and reusable containers and silverware. Try to avoid plastic cups and Styrofoam products. Please encourage other employees to do the same thing.

10. Use green marketing tool. Let the public and your customers know your company is environmentally friendly. That will enhance your company’s image.

11. Use energy efficient bulbs instead of light bulbs. Not only are they good for the environment, they last much longer.

12. If your office receives magazines or newsletters, find out if you can get them online or through email. When you have read them,delete them instead of tossing them to the wast basket!

13. Make your office at a steady temperature. In the winter, instead of turning up the heat, try wearing warmer clothes.

And last but not least, who says you have to have an electric pencil sharpener? Buy the old timer type, you know, the ones that require a twist of the wrist to sharpen. That goes for staplers too. With just a few adjustments, you can make a difference in the workplace and the world!

The following information is from the ASPOUSA website. We are running out of time to make the adjustments that will be necessary in order to cope with the vastly lower energy supplies that will be available to us.

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The US has long consumed about one-fourth of the world’s oil, and we act as if we can expect this pattern to continue. There are two reasons to question this assumption. First, of course, the rest of the world – especially the non-OECD nations – wants to grow their usage quickly (or did until the current economic crisis hit), and that will eventually increase their share of the total.

Second, the US has had to borrow extensively to finance its oil imports. When oil is $80 per barrel-twice today’s price – and we import 14 million barrels per day, that comes to $1.1 billion per day, or $400 billion per year. Some of that is paid for by our exports, but much has been made possible by foreign purchases of our debt securities. With the massive deficits America is creating to finance the bailouts and recovery packages, who will lend us money in the future? What interest rates, or other security, will they demand? It is reasonable to assume that at some point foreign investors will drastically reduce the investments that fund our imports.

One example of how all of this could play out: if total net world production falls from 80 mbd (out of 86 mbd gross production – assuming a 7% gross-to-net factor, probably low) to 75 (a 6% decline), and the American share drops from 24% to 19%, then American supplies will drop from 19 mbd to 14, a 25% cut, while the rest of the world would continue to share the 61 mbd balance. Our reliance on importing oil with borrowed money could place much of the burden of global Peak Oil on the United States.

From this point there is one additional step we must consider. When the amount of oil available to the US falls far short of the average historical supply, then some process other than price will be used to allocate it. We can be sure that the military will get whatever it needs, and emergency uses including police and ambulances will also get their supplies. Then someone will decide whether to set aside special allotments for agriculture and long-distance trucking (pending the expansion and electrification of our rail network), for school buses and mass transit, and other priorities.

If the country decides to take seriously the transition to carbon reduction and a new energy system, oil will be required for the conversion process. These decisions will not be pretty, or easy. However, the “rest of us” will have to share whatever is left. A year or two ago, Tom Whipple projected that ordinary domestic gasoline supplies in the US by 2015 will be about half what they are now. That sounds about right.

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If by 2015 we have to manage our economy and lives with a 50% reduction in gasoline supplies we will witness a brutal competition for available supplies even with much higher prices. It may well be that even at high prices in certain parts of the US gasoline will often be nearly unavailable. It is almost a certainly that it will not be business as usual in the US from this time forward.

Rather than waste trillions of dollars trying to sustain the unsustainable the government should be planning for a vastly different way of organizing our civilization. For example, the improvement of our railroad system such take precedent over extending our reliance on highway transportation facilities. Localized living must be developed. Food must be grown close to smaller scale towns and walking to work and to local stores must be rediscovered.

So far the efforts of the Obama administration are not encouraging. Old habits die hard and few if any politicians are willing to tell the American people the truth even when they know it. The impact of Peak Oil on America will be profound but so far the nation is in a state of denial.

In 2006, Mexico was the sixth-largest oil producer in the world, and the second largest in the Western Hemisphere (behind the United States). State-owned Petroleos Mexicanos (Pemex) holds a monopoly on oil production in the country and is one of the largest oil companies in the world. However, oil production in the country has begun to decrease, as production at the giant Cantarell field declines.

The oil sector is a crucial component of Mexico’s economy: while its relative importance to the general Mexican economy has declined, the oil sector still generates over 10 percent of the country’s export earnings. More importantly, the government relies upon earnings from the oil industry (including taxes and direct payments from Pemex) for one-third of total government revenues. Therefore, any decline in production at Pemex has a direct effect upon the country’s overall fiscal balance. As is seems that the Cantarell is in a state of irreversible decline the consequences of declining oil from Mexico will be a disaster for Mexico and the United States.

In 2008 Mexico dropped to the third largest exporter of oil to the United States and is now behind Canada and Saudi Arabia. Within a few years Mexico may have to suspend exports of oil altogether as it will need all of the oil that it can produce for domestic consumption. The loss of export oil revenues will plunge Mexico’s economy and government programs into a financial crisis mode. The US will also be effected as an increasing wave of poverty in Mexico will place further pressures on an already strained immigration problem as poor Mexicans fled Mexico for what they hope will be better working and living conditions within the US.

As there is little doubt that oil production from the Cantarell field has already occurred the next few years will prove to be difficult ones for US and Mexican relationships. In addition to the immigration problem the US will have to find a replacement for oil now imported from Mexico.

Those who strongly favor oil and energy conservation fear that an oil market that reverses course and that moves lower will quickly blunt the urgency to develop alternative energy resources. Those who see crude oil prices continuing their raise after only a brief correction fear that high oil prices will destroy the very foundations that developed nations have been build upon, the foundation of cheap energy.

There is still some disagreement as to whether peak oil has been reached on a global basis. There is little doubt that peak oil has been reached in the United States as oil production has been falling since the 1970’s. If peak oil has been reached globally the world needs to urgently develop alternative energy resources or else developed nations face a drastic lowering of living standards.

The following article authored by Byron W. King for The Daily Reckoning further explains peak oil.

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First, here is a fast summary of Peak Oil. “Peak Oil” is a shorthand way of describing a “peak” in mankind’s ability to extract conventional oil from the crust of the Earth due to certain absolute limits on the petroleum resource base. In other words, you cannot extract oil that does not exist or that has not been discovered.

The Oil Age commenced in 1859, ushered in by the establishment of the Drake well in Titusville, Pa. For the past 15 decades, people have been getting better and better at lifting conventional oil out of the ground. We have progressed to the point where, in the past two years, daily global oil production has hovered around 81-82 million barrels per day (b/d), plus the 3-4 million b/d of natural gas liquids and synthetic crude from Canadian tar sands. Hence you often read of current world oil output of about 85 million b/d. If you follow the production curve back over the years, you will see that oil output has risen steadily almost every year over the past century, with some interruptions by the Great Depression, World War II and, more recently, the Iranian Revolution in the late 1970s. But now, in the past year or so, it appears that world daily output has reached some sort of peak or plateau.

Exxon Mobil’s position is to disagree that the current state of affairs represents any sort of present or imminent “peaking” in world oil output. In fact, Exxon’s stated position is this:

“A peak in petroleum liquids production, resulting solely from resource limitations, is unlikely in the next 25 years. Predictions of an imminent peak based on [the methodology developed by Shell Oil Co. geologist M. King Hubbert] in 1956 do not adequately account for resource growth from application of new technology, knowledge and capability, which combine to increase recovery, open new producing areas and lower economic thresholds.

“Supplies from OPEC and non-OPEC countries, gas-related liquids and unconventional resources are growing. Furthermore, nations with the largest remaining resources produce under long-term restraints not envisioned in Hubbert’s method. The ultimate peak in petroleum production may result from factors other than resource limitations.”

Exxon Mobil forecasts an increase in demand for petroleum liquids from about 85 million b/d in 2006 to 115 million b/d in 2030, or average growth in demand of about 1.2 million b/d per year. Worldwide, over the next 25 years, the ability of the petroleum industry to meet this demand will depend, in great measure, on what Exxon calls “adequate access to petroleum resources.” This latter term includes ensuring that the oil industry has access to drill in areas not previously explored or exploited, such as geographically or politically isolated areas, as well as areas of deep water or extreme climate, that require the development of new technology.

Distant Peak-Challenges:

Exxon Mobil challenges the Hubbert methodology on two fronts. Hubbert’s methodology rests on two interconnected assumptions. First, the methodology assumes that the size of the ultimate resource base can be known with some degree of accuracy. And second, the methodology assumes that the peak in production occurs when approximately 50% of that resource base has been extracted. According to Exxon Mobil, “An analysis of resource assessments and production history suggests that neither assumption is necessarily valid.”

First, “there appears to be a systematic bias that underestimates the size of the resource base by ignoring the future increase in recoverable volume.” That is, new petroleum discoveries, plus what is called “reserve growth” continue to add to the original resource base, thus pushing the extraction and decline curves out to future years.

Second, if the ultimate size of the resource base is systematically underestimated, it is not possible to state when 50%, or anything near that percentage, of the oil resource has been extracted.

Distant Peak-Thesis:

For the remainder of this article go to The Daily Reckoning