Campfire Tales - My Place in Space
/I recently had the pleasure of talking at the Grong Grong Star Picnic - 'Town of a Billion Lights'. It was a fantastic family event held under the stars on Saturday June 24th 2017 (almost the shortest day of the year). The weather was perfect, the sky was clear and the stars were bright. It was a chilly three degrees but the families came in droves to be part of the event.
One activity of the evening involved campfire tales or learning circles, there were topics such as; Fishing by the Stars, Aboriginal Dreamtime in the Stars and my topic - My Place in Space. Of course my place in space is centred around a very important star. As I told the participants around the campfire, it is a star that we cannot see tonight or any night really. It is 149.6 million kilometers away yet it is the closest star to earth, it is so big that one million earths will fit inside this star, it is known as the Yellow Dwarf Star or Sol and it is a young star at 4.6 million years of age.
If you haven't guessed already I am talking about the Sun and wow how impressive is it! The Sun has a surface temperature of 5,500 degrees Celsius and 15 million degrees, or there abouts, at its core. It is responsible for all of earths weather and it takes eight minutes for light to travel from the sun to earth.
The Sun can produce enough energy in forty minutes to meets our needs on earth for one year.
Why don't we harness this energy more? Each of my home designs are focused on the sun and using it both passively and actively. Through good design we can position our living spaces and their windows on the north, minimising the need for additional heating and maximising warmth and natural light.
It is not always easy to do this, for example all your views might face south and you want your windows and living space on that side, or the street might be on the north and you want the living areas away from the street but with good design there is usually a way to have both.
In summer the sun angle is higher in the sky which means we can easily block it out on the north side to also keep the home cool in summer and minimise the need for air conditioning.
Add to this the benefit of using thermal mass, like brick or other masonry material and we can store the warmth during the day and as the temperature cools down at night the warmth is released back into the room. With cross ventilation and good insulation you end up with a pretty comfortable house all year round largely because of the sun. This is called passive solar design.
We can also use active solar systems that generate electricity and heat water using the Suns energy. A common example of this are Photovoltaic (PV) solar panels that you see commonly on house roofs together with Solar Hot Water Systems. It might look like there are more and more roof top solar systems but in reality Australia has a long way to go, currently we are generating 0.1% of our electricity from solar power. Compared to a country like Germany who is producing closer to 30% from solar and leading the world.
The PV panels are made from silicon and convert the suns light and energy into a direct current (DC) which passes through an inverter to convert it into the AC electricity that all our appliances use.
Recently we have seen advances in PV with solar roof tiles being developed using a thin film technology so rather than adding panels to our roof tops over roof sheeting, the sheeting or tiles are the solar collectors.
We can also pump water, operate street lights, road signs, security systems and garden lights with solar panels. Solar panels are particularly helpful and feesible in these situations where mains electricity is not easily accessible.
Solar pavers are being developed for use on roads. They have LED lights in the them to create lines and signage without the need for paint and have the added benefit of heating elements to prevent snow and ice build up.
The Australian continent has the highest solar radiation per square metre of any continent which means we have one of the best solar energy resources in the world yet only 0.1% of energy comes from Solar
If we covered 0.2% of the earth surface in solar panels which is about the size of Germany than we could produced enough solar power for the whole world for a year.
Lets use this fabulous free resource more and make your place in space much more sunny!
A big thank you to the Grong Grong Earth Park committee who organised this event. Check out their earth park if you get a chance and visit often as there are many more stages to be added to the park, including a fort for the teenages that will be built by high school students and designed using sustainable design principles.