Are You Thinking About Building A Solar Power System

More and more people today are now looking for alternative ways of supplying power that they need in order to run appliances and equipment in their home. For some people because of where they live setting up a solar powered system is the ideal choice. In this article, we go through a number of factors that need to be taken into consideration if you are thinking about building a solar power system.

One of the first things that you should be doing in order to see if building a solar powered system is a viable option is to find out how much sunlight you get each day where you live. To do this you need to check out weather data for the area where you live or use a solar energy map, which you can easily find online.

The next thing that you need to do when considering building your own solar powered energy system is to calculate how much power it is you actually use. The easiest way of doing his by looking at the bills, you receive for your electricity company and then dividing the figures up so that they provide you an average of what you would use on a weekly basis. To work out what your weekly power consumption for your home is you take the total monthly figure off of your electricity bill and then divide this by 4.3.

Along with knowing how much sunlight, you are likely to get and how much power it is you will need to be able carry on running all appliances and equipment in your home there are other factors, which need to be taken into consideration. You need to make a decision on the kind of inverters you will be using, how many solar panels you will need and how many batteries you will need to store the energy in.

When it comes to selecting the inverters for your system, which is what converts the sunlight that has been collected by the solar panels in to AC power rather than DC power. All inverters will be rated according to their continuous and surge wattage. So the more power you are likely to use then the much higher these wattage ratings will need to be.

As for the batteries, you need ones that will be able to take continuous charges of electricity into them. Therefore, car batteries are not suitable simply because they are not designed to be able to collect and store large amounts of power at any time. The kind of batteries that you should be selecting to use when it comes to building your own solar powered system is say a marine or golf cart battery.

Of course, when it comes to someone actually choosing to build a solar powered system they must not forget about the solar panels. It is important that you carry out plenty of research on this item in order to ensure that you have the right ones for yours. As you will soon discover when looking for these panels there are a number of different sized panels to choose from. So take your time and look for those that will help to collect sufficient amounts of sunlight for your own particular requirements.

For more information on solar power try visiting http://solarlifepower.com/ where you will find lots of tips, advice and resources about topics such as portable solar power.

LCD Problems On Your Laptop

If you have a laptop whose screen is going dark, and not looking as bright as it once was. There are a few things that you can look at that can help.

There are three major parts of the computer screen of most laptops. An LCD Screen. A power inverter, and a backlight.

The LCD screen consists of all the pixels or points of light that display your images. The inverter takes the power from the computer and funnels it into the monitor. The backlight is a long bulb usually running along the bottom of the computer screen that illuminates the screen.

Now I know you're thinking if my computer is not as bright as it once was, it's probably the back light as it's what is shining the light on the back of the screen. But, usually it's not.

Most laptop LCD backlights are rated at around 30,000 hours. Which means you could leave the laptop on with the monitor on for three straight years before it would go bad.

Most LCD problems come from the inverter. In fact there are certain laptop models with drastically more defective inverters. In nine out of ten brightness issues, the inverter is the part that has gone bad. I've actually seen a few models that tend to burn out their inverters every six months or so. Making for a very expensive laptop to maintain.

If for some reason you have an issue with the LCD itself. That repair gets very, very expensive. You have to get the right size for the monitor and model. Although they can be pretty standard, Sharp makes a ton of the LCD monitors on most models of laptops.

As an estimate of parts, a backlight will run you around $10-30, an inverter is between $60-120, and a complete LCD replacement should be around $300. Each of those repairs take roughly about an hour to repair for a good tech, with the inverter being the easiest repair of them all.

Don't throw away your laptop just yet. It might be salvageable yet. LCD repairs are possible; just make sure that you get a good repair shop who has had experience.

Nerds Next Door is a computer repair company in Atlanta GA. If you have any questions, or would like information about onsite computer repair in Atlanta, please visit our website http://www.AtlantaComputerRepairs.net.

Neon Signs vs EL Wire Signs

Neon signs are great advertising for any business. Every neon sign made is handcrafted; despite the advancement in technology, the manufacturing of a sign just cannot be done by a machine. According to the design wanted, the artisan heats a glass tube into a pliable shape and then moulds the design and lettering as per the requirements. During this process of continuous heating and bending, air is let into the tube to maintain its hollow shape. After the designing is done, the tubes are vacuumed out using a suction pump, after which an inert gas is let into the tube—this gas determines the color of the neon sign. The gas-filled tube glows when current is passed through it ionizing the gas, thus causing it to glow. Neon gas tubes do not contain any filament like an ordinary light bulb, so their life spans are very long, ranging from ten to fifteen years.

Smaller neon tube diameters are easier to bend into written works but are not as distinguishable from a distance. Larger tube diameters are more visible from a distance, and are more effective in illuminating store front letters, but cannot be practically formed into smaller written applications. Larger diameter neon tubing is less brilliant.

Because of the work involved, neon signs are usually expensive.

What is an EL-Wire sign? EL-Wire (electroluminescent wire) is a cool running, flexible, lightweight, low power consumption light source. The wire itself has a copper core coated with phosphor and plastic. Around that plastic coated core are two ultra thin wires, and the whole assembly is encased in clear or colored plastic to give it color. EL-Wire runs on an AC current at 400-4000 hz, so you must attach it to an inverter or sequencer. Inverters and sequencers run on 1.5-12 Volts DC, so you can get one small enough to fit in your pocket or one large enough to light your entire car or business sign. There is a huge variety of options available in EL-Wire, inverters, and sequencers so that you can use EL-Wire nearly anywhere.

EL Wire Signs can be created with in fine detail that you just can't get with neon and no glass tubes to break. Signs can be powered by battery, solar, or wall plug. Any design can be used to create a rugged, bright, and long lasting sign.

El wire signs are not as expensive, can be customized, do not get hot and are much lighter than traditional neon signs, are flexible so any style of font can be used, can last for thousands of hours, and uses 1/10th of the power of a traditional neon sign.

Eyeflow Neon Signs offers cheap neon signs that not only can be custom designed as neon real estate signs but also available as neon car kits.