When most people think of solar energy, they think of roof mounted solar panels and converting those panels to electricity for houses. However there are many different uses for solar energy that often go over looked.

Solar energy is harvesting the power of the sun through the use of photovoltaic panels, or other collection techniques. There are many practical ways that you can use solar panels or other techniques.

Because solar power is becoming more popular the cost of solar power is dropping more and more homeowners are able to switch to solar and uses it throughout their homes in ways they never thought possible.  

Uses of solar power around the house 

Solar powered vent fans

A form of reducing costs without turning the air conditioning on is by using a ventilation fan. These fans are usually wired into the households electrical current, which isn’t exactly ideal when it comes to energy savings.

Now you can buy complete roof vent fan that has a small panel of photo-electric cells, which is used to operate the motor of the fan, so you don’t need to use the households electrical. These solar vent fans are the perfect fan for small spaces such as a shed or a garage.

Solar pool heaters

Going swimming is something that appeals to a lot of people, especially in the summer time. Pools can be used as a means to cool off, a way to workout and leisure pool activities. However, if a pool is too cold it can ruin all the fun.

It can be pretty pricey to heat a pool and it takes up a lot of energy. There are now solar energy methods that you can use to heat your pool. There is a solar blanket that can be used to heat the pool, as well as full on solar water heating systems.

The solar blanket floats on top of the pools water and heats the pool by soaking up the sun’s heat and then transmits the heat to the water, thus heating the pool.

The pool’s water heating system uses solar panels that are mounted on your rooftop collecting the suns heat, those panels then transmit the heat through tubes that are looped through the panels.

The water is slowly circulated from the pool, up to the heating panels and back to the pool. The pools water slowly heats up through this method.

Solar power cooking

This is a fun way to cook. It isn’t exactly practical, but if you are having issues with your other methods of cooking, this is a good option. You can craft this mechanism by yourself.

In order to create this solar cooking mechanism you will need a box, pan, aluminum foil, a cooking bag, duct tape, Styrofoam insulation and a thermometer. You would then have to assemble the solar cooking box then you would be ready to cook.

Solar power energy use outside of the home

Wearable solar technology

Almost all devices that operate on batter power are able to be charged with solar power. There are a lot of solar kits that allow you to plug items directly into to use this power.

They are used to give power to cell phones, music speakers, solar air conditioning, freezers/mini-fridges and rechargeable batteries. These technological developments it is expected to expand the solar market into wearable solar power.

These wearable solar power items would be those of apple watches and Fitbits. They estimate that if these larger markets looked into changing these items to solar powered items they, it would be a huge hit with those who are consumers of the products..

Solar power transportation

Another solar power trend that is often overlooked is solar powered transportation. Solar transportation is an innovative invention that is used to make an effective use of the sunshine with transportation.

Right now solar railroads, subways, buses, planes, cars and even roads that are all on the solar market today. These are all growing in popularity in the solar market, but there is a mode of transportation that is often overlooked when it comes to solar powered modes of transportation is, solar planes.

Solar airplanes are the newest mode of solar transportation and recently an aircraft called Solar Impulse 2, has flown across the Pacific. It was previously thought to be improbable to fly a plane that was solely powered by the sun.

Solar outdoor lighting

Outdoor solar lighting is an easy way to provide efficiency. These out door solar lights are easy to set up and don’t have complicated wires that need to be set up. Right now they aren’t quite as popular as solar panels, but they are growing in popularity.

With the outdoors solar lighting’s popularity increase, the aesthetics of this solar lighting are changing and they now can greatly improve your backyard aesthetics.