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Takaendesa Denhere
Houses and energy are inter-related, every normal home needs energy.
Man is the most greedy consumer of energy as he uses it for different purposes: cooking, washing, warming and lighting etc.
Energy is needed for his body to move as well. For this reason money has to be budgeted for food, electricity in order to live a healthy life.
Electricity, normally, is a priority on the family monthly savings so it is wise to pay proper attention in this area. In a household, a wise family plans and manages energy as carefully as possible to save money otherwise the entire earnings will evaporate into thin air. Some of the monies spent on energy use can be channelled towards other pressing issues like school fees, medicals and family responsibilities. Conventional wisdom tells us that adoption of solar energy by home-owners is one of the surest ways of saving money. After all, those that have access to electricity from the conventional grid live in continuous disappointment when the supplier fails to deliver, which is common in Zimbabwe, leading to stress, anxiety and fear creating a very unhealthy nation. The environment smiles the moment we start to use solar energy, the reason being that it reduces/stops global warming. Global warming threatens the survival of human society as well as countless species.
Production of electricity from the sun does not include emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere which cause global warming. In fact, it is the best solution to the global warming crisis. People are using fossil fuels that destroy the environment especially firewood.
In 2006 the RECIPES Project noted that it is the most widely used fuel in Zimbabwe with 80 percent of people using it for heating and lighting purposes. All people affected use it: in rural, peri-urban, urban areas. When we adopt this energy we would have taken the social responsibility of taking care of mother earth through collective action. Electrical gadgets must be monitored closely. They consume a lot of energy because they use electric power directly without converting it. You take a geyser or a water heating element for example, they constitute between 35-60 percent of our total energy bills. In winter we always gear ourselves to fork out more money for energy bills, why? Because energy demand is high during winter as we need to heat our homes and water. Fortunately, solar technology has proved to us that it can do the same at free of charge, so why not adopt it? There are solar heating systems that were specifically made for you homeowners that can heat your water as effectively as conventional water heaters.
Solar water heaters are systems that were made to heat water in swimming pools, jacuzzis as well as for domestic use at home. Heated water for bathing, dish-washing, laundry and other uses is available 24 /7 because solar water storage facilities are gigantic compared to conventional ones so as to facilitate use of hot water throughout the night since little or no energy is generated at night. Technological advancement is now tipping to the advantage solar energy. Solar energy in its development has not yet fully matured so it does not augur well with old home appliances and most of them consume a lot of energy. Let’s take an old television set for example; it can be used on solar systems but for a limited amount of time because power consumption is very high.
These types of television sets were common and some people are still using them. They are bulky and have a high voltage; technically these are called cathode ray tube (CRT) screen displays. According to online sources a 17 inch CRT requires 90W and nowadays the LED, LCD sets which are energy-efficient only require 35W and they are increasingly becoming common, so these can be sustainable using solar energy for longer periods of time. Solar energy is very reliable compared to fossil energy. In the case of the latter, homesteads are quietened or are plunged into darkness through load shedding, bad weather, wet coal or mechanical faults of the utility supplier. When you look at solar energy, the rising and setting of the sun is extremely consistent.
All across the world we know exactly when it will rise and set everyday of the year. While clouds maybe less predictable we do have fairly good seasonal and daily projections for the amount of sunlight that will be received in daily locations throughout the country. Furthermore, a research by GENI the energy from the sun falls at a rate of 120 petawatts, so the energy received from the sun in one day can satisfy the whole world’s demand for more than 20 years.
Solar systems also have a very long lifespan; they work for between 25 and 30 years before you have to replace the old systems. On top of the above mentioned benefit of reliability, solar energy provides energy security. No-one can go and claim that he owns the sun or holds patents to it neither can a company turn it into a monopoly over its use.
The only time when that madness happened was centuries ago during the reign of the Roman Empire when they argued over holding patents to the sun which they called “sun rights” but it had something to do with solar bathtubs. Energy independence is possible when you install solar systems in your homes. Again the “fuel” for solar panels cannot be bought or monopolised; it is actually free energy for all. So the moment you mount solar panels on your roof, you essentially have an independent source of electricity that is all yours.
With all this clear evidence I am not sure why a great number of citizens in this country submit their independence to utility suppliers and always find themselves being heartbroken or disappointed when utilities fail to do as they are expected. Some of them have gone for a couple of years without electricity waiting for someone to connect them to the grid instead of taking initiative to generate energy independently.
House value increase tremendously by installing solar systems. The moment a solar system is put in place then automatically the value of the house goes up. Just in case one decides to sell his/her property you need an accurate valuation of your home and in fact your system can actually attract more buyers.
Appraisal journal of October 1998 and 1999 states that a solar electrical system increases your home value in annual utility bill savings , which means the system pays almost for itself with the appraisal value increase in some cases.
I also have a word for those living in rural areas. Just because you don’t have access to conventional electricity does not mean you will never have electricity neither does it give you a ticket to burn fossil energy which is harmful to the environment. You can use the sun to light up homes and power electronic devices, charge your phones and laptops without travelling great distances to get these items charged risking injuries and robberies. Just get a simple solar system and transform your lives. Solar lamps are there in this country in abundance so why not get some.
Pupils are studying into the night using paraffin or diesel homemade lamps that smoke lots making it unbearable to study for a very long time. Apart from that, the fuel burnt for lighting can be very expensive due to scarcity or may not be easily accessible at certain points in time. S
o get a solar lamp or install solar systems to make your lives easier. Interestingly, there are now cookers which use solar energy for food preparation whether it is frying, boiling, steaming – solar cookers. These are devices that use sunlight rays as fuel contrary to what people are used to, igniting a flame so as to cook the food they want on a cooker. This is how it works; the cooker is made of shiny reflective surfaces that refocus and redirects the sun’s rays onto the pot producing tremendous heat that can reach between 80-100°C. When you prepare food using conventional cookers chances are very high that you will cook food unevenly or you will burn the food but not so with the solar cooker. Food prepared by slow cookers is most preferable because the food retains flavour, moisture, nutrients and makes meat tenderer. There are different solar cookers available on the market; heat trap boxes, curved concentrators and a combination of both.
The only weakness of these cookers is that they do not work at night.
Having mentioned all this, I know that some already have questions popping up their minds. “What if my house is located in areas which receive less sunshine?” “I live in Nyanga in the Eastern Highlands of Zimbabwe which is almost cloudy everyday of the year.” “Will the solar panels work efficiently in my home?”Emphatic yes! You can adopt solar energy despite your environmental conditions. What you just need to do is to buy and install silicon solar panels which are found in two types; crystalline – which is made of single large crystals and polycrystalline made of silicon with many small crystals.
Silicon panels are special a type of panels best performing in low light conditions. Germany is the biggest producer of solar electricity in the world but she is not known of having many sunny days. Of course she uses silicon solar panels to achieve this. However, since these panels are the most efficient you must be prepared to fork out more cents from your pocket when you desire to purchase them. When you want to install solar systems, you must consider a number of factors; are you going to totally wean yourself from the utility supplier (stand alone) or you are going to blend both on your table of options. If you are to install a standalone system then the start-up or initial costs are going to be very high at that time.
But after paying initial expenses you are only paying maintenance costs for 30 years! If one does not want to use solar energy only, he or she prefers to use energy from the utility supplier then the hybrid system is wiser to use. The hybrid system distributes electricity both for the utility grid and your local solar system. It will be up to the user to decide which energy to use.
One of the reasons so far affecting the growth of solar use in Zimbabwe is that many of us are holding on to wrong or outdated ideas. We think that it is fashionable to use conventional energy yet its production affects the very health of the energy consumer especially fossil generated energy. Ironically, if it is really fashionable then sorry, you have been left behind. Many industrialised nations who are technologically advanced have already moved on to adopt solar energy. Germany is leaving the fossil-nuclear age behind, paving the way for photovoltaics (PV) to play a significant role in a future shaped by sustainable power production.
China, Japan and the US are moving fast towards adoption of solar energy so why not you who is blessed enough to have sunny days most of the time? By and large, it can be seen that solar energy is the next alternative source of energy that should be utilised as soon as you realise it, ideal for you homeowners. This is the future already in the now. As solar technology progresses we will see people generating electricity for Zimbabwean homes using clean, renewable energy whether from a solar grid or a stand alone system.
People will care less about energy bills focusing on other important issues of life. The moment you start to use solar, you are already generations ahead of those who use conventional energy.
Online Reporter