I live in an apartment building, which is heated geothermal. It's renewable but rather expensive to install. It's also hard to keep the water warm, because the maximum heat reached is lower compared to other energy carriers.
Gas heating systems have been around for a very long time and have been used for years. Natural gas is often used.
As soon as a building is too cold, this is reported to the boilers. There, gas burns. This produces heat, which is then transferred to the radiators with water. The radiators warm the rooms and then the cold water flows back and it is heated again.
Solar energy is full of advantages:
You become more independent from the power grid, you save money and electricity - and you increase the value of your property.
How does solar panels work?
Step 1: Sunlight activates the panels.
Step 2: The cells produce electrical current.
Step 3: The electrical energy is converted.
Step 4: The converted electricity powers your home.
Step 5: A net meter measures usage.
At the end of 2019, there were about 100,000 photovoltaic systems in Switzerland. These ones produce around 4% of the total electricity consumption.
On this map below you can see where solar radiation is the highest in Switzerland. On the map on the right side you can see, where the photovoltaics pannels are installed.
In which two cantonc are the highest solar radiation?
Sources:
Swisssolar
Solar 101 - The 5 steps of photovoltaics
Nuclear energy is one of Switzerland's most important sources of energy. 35 % of total electricity generation is derived from nuclear energy. Currently, three locations operate four reactor units. Switzerland is one of 13 countries that generate a quarter of its energy from nuclear power. In an international comparison, our nuclear power units perform very well, as we carried out strict checks after the disaster in Fukushima.
The reactor units have a total capacity of 3,095 megawatts. That is 3'095'000'000 watts, for comparison: 1 gram of water can be heated by 14.3 degrees Celsius with 1 watt.
Nuclear energy is very controversial in Switzerland; 9 referendums have already attempted to force the phasing out of nuclear energy. The construction of new nuclear power plants was banned in 2017. Nevertheless, a clear majority of 64% supports nuclear energy as long as it can be generated safely. In the future, this will initiate the gradual phase-out. That makes Switzerland, together with Germany, the only Nations who are actively phasing out nuclear energy.
Quiz question:
Which of these countries has the most reactor units?
☐ China
☐ Russia
☐ France
The solution is France with 58 reactors.
Vocabular:
referendums -> Volksinitiative
Sources:
Kernenergie in der Schweiz (Wikipedia.org)
Kernenergie weltweit (Kernenergie.ch)
Abstimmungen KKW (uvek.admin.ch)
Vocabular:
referendums -> Volksinitiative
Dario & Justin
Thermal energy is technically heat. With thermal heat we can boil liquids and with the steam you can drive a turbine. The average daily radiation power reaching the earth's surface (based on 24 hours) is approximately 165 W/m² worldwide. The use of solar thermal energy was already practised in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia and in the early South American advanced civilisations through the architecture of their buildings.
It's an ineffective type of energy production, since it only works with steam and not directly with water. Also, a lot of vapor is produced, which isn't able to turn a turbine.
Examples are solar plants or water heating roofs.
What is water?
a: a liquid
b: a solid
c: a gas
Where does nearly all off the energy in the atmosphere come from?
Wikipedia
Ulza, Lukas, Livia
Energy wood is the most important renewable energy source in Switzerland. Unlike oil, gas and coal, the combustion of wood as firewood, pellets or wood chips takes place in a CO2-neutral cycle. The carbon dioxide released during combustion is reabsorbed by the renewable forest.
Burning wood as firewood can probably be considered the oldest use of wood. Worldwide, the use of the forest as a supplier of firewood still ranks first. In Switzerland, too, energy wood is experiencing a renaissance. After hydropower, biomass is the most important regenerative energy source in Switzerland. Wood is by far the most important biofuel. In Switzerland firewood is burned in almost 1.8 million stoves.
Why should you heat with wood?
Wood accumulates in sufficient quantities during forest management and is constantly growing back on our doorstep.
Quiz
How many litres are being saved per year?
• 100 Mio.
• 5 Mrd.
• 2 Mrd.
• 50 Mrd.
Biomass
Discarded orange peels, cow dung or wood - there is valuable energy in numerous organic wastes and in forest and residual wood, so-called biomass. Among renewable energy, biomass is considered the all-rounder: it can be used to produce electricity, heat and fuel.
Carmen R. / D. and Jana
Geothermal the new energy from the ground
Did you know we can use energy from the ground to heat our houses and buildings?
The earth holds a lot of heat in its interior. With a combination of geothermal and heat pumps, it is now possible and it also saves energy. Because of the high potential, there are even new trials to produce electricity with earth's heat, but that needs a bit more time to be perfect.
This new way of heating saves our environment and has many more good aspects. :)
More...
Our house is heated with natural gas (our hot water is also heated with natural gas).
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The appropriate gas is burned in the gas burner, and it can be fed into the burner at any time due to a slight overpressure of the gas pipe. The resulting heat is transferred via a heat exchanger to the ready heating water of the natural gas heating system and then pumped along with the water via a circulation pump to the radiators. The radiators then release the heat generated into the environment. Meanwhile, the cooled water flows back to be heated again. (https://www.thermondo.de/info/rat/gas/warum-ist-eine-erdgasheizung-so-gefragt/)
Heat resources - geothermal heating
In my home, we heat with the heat of the earth, the so-called geothermal heating. It is renewable energy and can be easily extracted. We use this energy to warm our house and also to warm our water.
Geothermal energy refers to the use of heat from the earth's interior. This energy stored in the earth can be used with the help of various methods. In most cases, geothermal probes are used in combination with heat pumps to heat single-family homes and large buildings. Geothermal probes go to depths of 200 to 400 meters.
The heat stored in the earth's crust (thermal energy). It is versatile and can be used for heating and cooling, as well as for electricity generation or in a combined heat and power system. The energy potential is enormous: 99% of the earth is warmer than 1000 °C. And geothermal energy also has many advantages in terms of environmental friendliness: no burning of fossil fuels and thus no harmful emissions.
To know what living vegan is like, Jennifer decided to live vegan for three weeks and see what the difficulties are. Carmen guided Jennifer through this three weeks because she already lives vegan for a year.
At the beginning it was hard to get used to the new way of eating. During the three weeks it wasn't even that hard to not eat meat but it was very hard to not drink milk or consume other products of animals.
I would recommend trying to live vegan to everyone because I thinks it's a very exciting experience.
During this project we learned a lot about the importance of building materials. They have a big impact on the buildings but also on the environment. By using building materials like rammed earth we can safe masses of energy for other things.
We also realised how difficult it is to make environmentally friendly adjustments, as there are many individual variables in a building project.
Even though we didn't expect the complexity of this project, we managed to put together an informative project.
By Dario & Justin