Solar panel and solar energy is the most common way for other people to use as an alternate power source for their residential homes and even commercial businesses, but did you know that there are alternatives to solar panels for homes? What is my electric bill so high? Solar panels? Why don’t solar panels work during a blackout? Here are some of the best solar panel alternatives for your homes.
What is the best alternative power source?
- Tidal Energy
The application has more in common in wind turbines than hydroelectric methods despite both using the power of water to generate energy. The potential of Tidal energy is actually enormous, despite it being a fairly new technology, it could actually meet 20% of the UK’s current electricity demands.
The most common tidal energy generation as of the moment are the Tidal Stream Generators that use the kinetic energy of the ocean in order to power turbines without having to produce waste of fossil fuels and they are also found to be susceptible to the elements as other forms of alternative energy.
- Hydrogen Gas
Hydrogen is actually a completely clean burning fuel, unlike all the other forms of natural gas. The hydrogen gas cells only emit water vapor on warm air when you use it. The major issue that is found when you use hydrogen as a form of alternative energy is that it is mostly derived from the use of natural gas and fossil fuels.
Electrolysis is essential for the splitting of water into hydrogen and oxygen, and this process makes getting hydrogen as a power source less of an issue. Research is being conducted to find a way to make it more efficient and more cost-effective.
- Natural Gas
Natural gas has been a way of power source for a number of decades. It is being used in cars so that they could reduce the carbon emissions that they are making. The demand for this energy had been increasing, in fact , the lower 48 states of the United States of America reached levels of demand and consumption of using natural gas as an energy source last 2016.
Despite all the demands, natural gas has some issues, like a lot of alternative power sources. The potential for contamination is greater when you are using natural gas compared to other alternative fuel sources. Natural gas also happens to emit greenhouse gases, even if the amount of carbon dioxide it emits is lower than with fossil fuels.
- Geothermal Power
When you see geothermal power, it is when you extract energy from the ground around us. It is currently growing increasingly popular over the years and the World Bank currently estimates that roughly around 40 countries would be able to meet most of their power demands if they consider using geothermal energy.
This power source has great potential while doing that, it also caused a little disruption to the land. But it is heavy on the upfront costs of creating geothermal power plants and it may or may not lead to slower adoption than expected.
- Wind Energy
Offering the same benefits that many alternative fuel sources do, getting your power from the wind has been an increasingly popular form of power source in recent years. It makes use of a renewable source and it generates no waste.
As of the moment, wind energy installations are powering roughly 20 million homes in the United States per year and it is growing, and it is growing fast. A lot of states have some form of wind energy that is set up and they have invested into the technology, and that investment also continues to grow.
But this type of energy source also has its own challenges, like wind turbines. Wind turbines tend to restrict views (but could also add to the view in some cases) and maybe more dangerous to some form of wildlife, like birds dying when they accidentally fly into it.
- Biomass Energy
Burning of wood has been the most common form of biomass energy, and had been used for thousands of years in order to create heat, but in the more recent advancements, you could also see that they use waste, like landfills, and alcohol products for similar purposes.
These are very cost-efficient but there are a number of issues that you have to consider when you are using these systems, especially if you are using them at home.
There are pros and cons in finding alternative ways to get natural and sustainable energy, but out of these options, solar energy would have to be the most sustainable and available power source out there. Solar energy is completely renewable and the cost of the installation would be outweighed by the money that you would be able to save at the end of the day.