The Solar Energy Awning
The Solar Awning Made the Sun My Best Friend
As part of my energy self-sufficiency goal, I’m working on making all the properties I manage energy self-sufficient. One property had a very high heat load in the summer because of a bank of windows facing south, but in the winter, this heat load greatly reduces heating costs. We’re in the first phase of the energy self-sufficiency project on this property where we assess the opportunities to reduce energy use while identifying ways to create our own energy specific to that property. We came up with a fairly simple solution that has a triple impact – the solar awning. It decreases the solar heat load in the summer, it allows the sun to make it’s way into the house in the winter for passive solar heating, and it is made of solar panels so it produces close to 3KW of electricity – meeting about 3/4 of the electricity needs for this property.
The design of the solar awning is available on www.cheetahpower.net.
To learn how to get started with solar energy – check out the free solar energy smart guide on www.cheetahpower.net.
This entry was posted
on Thursday, January 15th, 2009 at 11:00 pm and is filed under Energy Independence, Tips for Project Management.
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