How to design for low energy needs

Lights and appliances are carefully selected for lowest power consumption, so you can get the most benefits from the fixed amount of power available. When visiting a well designed solar electric home, you might not even notice the difference until someone tells you.

1. Design whole house (water, heat, power) for low energy use. Use propane or other fuels, never electricity, for all major heating appliances. This means furnace and room heaters, kitchen range or stove, water heater, and clothes dryer should use propane, oil, natural gas, wood, thermal solar, whatever; but NOT electricity. Also choose convection furnaces or vented heaters that require no electricity to operate or distribute their heat. Use evaporative coolers instead of air conditioning.

2. Carefully select very special low energy lights and appliances. Solar electric homes use special electric refrigerators and freezers that do the job using only 1/4 as much power.(Some use gas refrigerators). Prices are more than conventional appliances, but savings in the cost of the energy system are greater than the appliance cost because fewer solar panels and batteries are required.

3. Eliminate waste of energy by appliances, and by human carelessness. Use timer switches for outdoor lights and maybe in children's rooms, and shut off lights when they are not directly being used. Learn where your energy is going and see if each load is necessary. For example, even when switched off, some appliances draw power all the time, (Stereo, TV, VCR, some office equipment, garage door openers etc). These particular items, called phantom loads, should be disconnected completely by a wall switch or switched outlet strip, when not in use.

After meeting those three measures, a practical and affordable solar electric system (or wind, or micro-hydro or a combination) can provide electricity for your home.