“President Obama in his ‘state of the nation’ address has made clear and precise commitments to support the solar panel industry in the US which will help create jobs and help transition away from what even he now views as inevitable. The end of the oil age.”

Ushering in solar panels as the new norm.

Building a model for a non-petroleum based economy with more localised food production, alongside environmental protection’s are pivotal to our modern world’s future.

“All intertwined and yet all essential to keep the thin veneer of social functioning.”

The stable global climate, we all grew up in is now obsolete and preparing for both extreme winter and summer weather events is paramount meaning the perpetual ‘growth’ model must also soon be outdated. (more…)

“I can think of only one downside to installing solar panels to your home and that is Santa cannot land on your roof for the next thirty years. This will make his Christmas eve harder and more dangerous than previous years.”

Why Santa hates solar panels?

Seriously though, I was gobsmacked when a friend asked me: “are solar panels worth installing?”, to which my reply was: “energy prices have risen every year, year on year, so why wouldn’t you?”

Now this may not be as condescending as it first seems, as my friend in question is intelligent, articulate and may I say very beautiful – however after 10 years of enthusiastically shouting from the hills about solar panels, the problem here lies with me because I see a very different world to the one most people see. (more…)

“In the ten years since I first fell in love with PV solar (photovoltaic) technology, I have been answering questions from pioneering adopters and thought I’d heard them all. That was until asked, “whether an electromagnetic pulse will affect my solar panels?”

Sunspots produce X-flares.

In celebration of Power My Home’s 10th birthday, I will answer this most unusual of questions.

Upon further enquiry, I discovered the nature of this question stemmed from worries about the current peak solar activity and more than usual solar flares which are currently being ejected out by the sun.

If one of these super-massive coronal mass ejections (CMEs) were to give the Earth a direct hit, then this would bath the planet and our solar panels with electromagnetic waves, but not pulses. (more…)

“A paradigm shift is occurring, and America’s wealth has gravitated East, and China’s once renowned poverty is also moving West. Being America’s 51st state has always been beneficial to Britain, but could this cosy relationship also become a curse?”

A brighter road ahead with a quality solar installer.

America defaulting on its debts is just around the corner. America defaulting on its obligations will change life for every person in every state including the 51st.

The ball has again been kicked down the road until January by the successive administrations, with their debt ceiling debates, but the day of reckoning is coming.

What is happening here, is the American government is telling the rest of the world including China, “keep lending us more money, or we will default on our debts, and this is a road you don’t want to go down!” (more…)

“An overheard conversation at a supermarket checkout inspired me (without the aid of coffee) to write this funny but also serious article about energy drinks.”

A mother while struggling to bag her weekly shop suddenly shouted

“No you can’t have an energy drink you’re 11 years old.”

A generation addicted to caffeine.

What I chuckle was the follow-up statement of

“if you’ve got no energy at your age then there’s something seriously wrong with you.”

On hearing this statement, I wanted to high-five this lady.

This scenario highlights a severe problem in our modern day society today. Our children are getting addicted to this seemingly harmless beverage type, but I feel we are storing up problems for the up and coming generation if this is not dealt with soon.

High caffeine energy drinks

are not

on the same level as the Lucozade drinks of my generation. (more…)

“When most people saw the devastation of the Fukushima plants, they rolled their eyes and thought, “just another Chernobyl” and got on with their lives. I, however, saw the beginning of the end as our last big hope for generating large-scale power, which wouldn’t accelerate the global warming problem, goes into meltdown.”

The end of the nuclear-powered dream.

If you think you are half a world away from danger, then think again. The blue-fin tuna and other food resources you take for granted will now be contaminated!

For a real sense of the Fukushima disaster, the Japanese authorities asked the outside world for help. For anyone who knows Japanese culture, they would know that this culture does not allow much for asking for help on an individual or governmental basis. (more…)

“I always try to stay away from writing about politics as much as I can, but after finding out what our current Secretary of state for environment, food and rural affairs has been saying lately, I simply had to put fingers to keyboard.”

Owen Paterson MP.

The cabinet minister Owen Paterson responsible for the countries environmental policies said publicly:

“that global warming would be beneficial”.

Mr Paterson also claimed:

“there would be advantages to an increase in temperature predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change including fewer people dying of cold in winter and the growth of certain crops further north.”

This level of childlike thinking does not stop there as he also added: (more…)

“As a kid whose surrogate parent was the 1970s television schedule, I have gone through life with TV pretty much as the backdrop to my life. Even when I first discovered the internet in the mid-1990s, the goggle box was always on in the background.”

A warning from the past about TV programming. Edna from Willow the Wisp.

That is why my younger self would be perplexed that I am currently enjoying my second week without my usual daily dose of television and not missing it at all.

I am now beginning to think my lifelong love affair with television is over. I am looking at my ‘Back to the future’ style flat screen telly, and the screen is black and has been for the last couple of weeks.

So why has my futuristic television lost my interest? What happened in my mind on that day where I didn’t reach for the remote and why am I continuing to ignore it to this day. Maybe it’s the awareness of the continued and increasing bombardment of commercial advertising. (more…)

“This week Caroline Lucas MP uttered a profound sentence as being arrested for protesting against fracking in Southern England this week. “Fracking is the dying breaths from the fossil fuels industry,” she said while debating the issue.”

To frack or not to frack?

As someone who can understand both sides of the fracking debate currently gripping the nation at the moment, I can see a country wrestling with its conscience.

For those who watch the news and see protesters passionately making their voices and views heard reminds me of the fuel protests of 2005. Both are consequences, or as I call them first tremors, of a much more significant danger, called peak oil. A Pompeian style disaster was looming over the whole world, and like the Pompeians, the threat was there every day, but mostly ignored or misunderstood.

Protesters who gather at anti-fracking demonstrations are on the whole, attempting to stop the energy industries from extracting another form of CO2 which would exacerbate the global heating problem. (more…)

“While enjoying a pint during a country walk, I was distracted by a conversation occurring behind me about solar panels.”

Do solar panels work well in the United Kingdom?

Interested to hear a stranger’s point of view about my beloved subject, I kept an ear on the conversation whilst admiring the beautiful Welsh countryside around me.

It didn’t take long for the conversation to steer around the effectiveness of solar technology within our varied British climate.

Resisting the urge to break my silence and introduce myself as an enthusiast for solar panels, I listened carefully to the conversation as the eldest of the two gentlemen begin to sing the usual myths surrounding this technology.

(more…)