Since available information in this regard is incomplete, DIY Source has prepared a practical guide on how to set up DIY solar power systems. DIY Solar Power for Beginners will guide you in customizing your grid, tied as well as mobile and off-grid solar power systems. We will walk you through the whole process of building your own solar system, including calculating your electricity needs.

Converting your home to solar energy is one of the best investments you will ever make. You’ve heard that installing solar power reduces the value of your home. Or that your roof will leak if you install solar power. You may even have heard that if solar panels are imperfectly installed, your house will burn down. Don’t believe any of it. They’re just not true.

The biggest issue many of us face is installing solar power and not breaking the bank. What if we could show you a way to be able to do both? Find out how to make the switch to solar power.

Instead of paying the energy companies for power, you can learn how solar energy is becoming more and more viable. Reductions in costs make it less money to install than one thinks. Harnessing the power of the sun is something unique that you won’t get via other energy sources.

Discover the secrets to powering your vehicle to go off the grid with mobile solar power systems. Learn how to power up to go off the grid the right way! Living in a van or RV is an awesome experience - but using loud generators to power your devices is not. When all you want to do is get on the move, having to rely on someone else's electricity can really put a damper on your travel choices. The good news? Solar panels, which are a very efficient source of renewable energy, can power everything you need - whether you are on the go or parked at a campsite!

Untangle the jargon and design your solar power system from scratch—even if you're new to this! Thomas Edison once said he'd invest in solar energy if he could. Now, you can make it a reality. Amidst the urgency to combat pollution from fossil fuels, solar energy stands out as the greenest and most profitable solution. Imagine harnessing sunlight's abundant energy to power your life – from calculators to entire homes.

Have you ever had the longing to explore the great outdoors and to live in an RV? Do you want a versatile method of living that will also enable you to visit your children and grandchildren comfortably and hassle-free, whenever you want? Are you in a dire financial situation that might force you to live in an RV in your old age? I, George Lee will share the secrets of living in an RV full time as a senior citizen.

RVing takes a lot of planning and decision making, especially if you bring kids and pets on the road. The logistics of it can be overwhelming, and mistakes can be very expensive. Unless, of course, you’ve got the right resource to guide you.

Millions of people visit xkcd.com each week to read Randall Munroe's iconic webcomic. His stick-figure drawings about science, technology, language, and love have a large and passionate following. Fans of xkcd ask Munroe a lot of strange questions. What if you tried to hit a baseball pitched at 90 percent of the speed of light? How fast can you hit a speed bump while driving and live? If there were a robot apocalypse, how long would humanity last?

For any task you might want to do, there's a right way, a wrong way, and a way so monumentally complex, excessive, and inadvisable that no one would ever try it. How To is a guide to the third kind of approach. It's full of highly impractical advice for everything from landing a plane to digging a hole.

Just as World War II called an earlier generation to greatness, so the climate crisis is calling today's rising youth to action: to create a better future. In Unstoppable, Bill Nye crystallizes and expands the message for which he is best known and beloved. That message is that with a combination of optimism and scientific curiosity, all obstacles become opportunities, and the possibilities of our world become limitless.

A manned mission to Mars has been the dream of humanity at least since the 19th century, when we first saw details of the surface and thought there might be canals filled with water there. Here I’ve looked at the history of unmanned exploration of Mars over the last 50-plus years, proposed missions to Mars, Mars settlements, and other major issues regarding traveling to and living on Mars. Some proposals have lots of details of proposed scenarios, if you want to know all of the engineering and scientific analysis work.

These small houses are taking the world by storm at the moment, and rightfully so. Combine a massive oversupply of containers with people looking to live in cheap homes, that are even eco-friendly, and you can see why building container homes is a match made in heaven. Steel containers may seem unlikely candidates to use as building materials, but nothing could be further from the truth. These containers make for amazingly cheap houses, for the fraction of the cost of a traditional home. This book is a step-by-step guide on how you can build a container home.

Most people who are considering off grid living, are those who are wanting to escape the stress and busyness of city life, and enjoy the peace and tranquility of country living. Owning your own property, and providing for your needs with self-sufficiency projects sounds wonderful and fun, but what are the most important self-sufficiency/survival projects, and how do you accomplish them? That is where this book will help.

Water is the most fundamental of survival needs. While many communities around the world are used to struggling with water shortages, many of us have no clue what we would do in this sort of situation.

Harvesting Rainwater for Your Homestead in 9 Days or Less is a complete step-by-step homesteader’s guide to the power of rainwater harvesting.This handbook draws on the brilliant seven-step QuickRain blueprint to help urban, rural, and off-grid homesteaders set up an above-ground, dry rainwater harvesting system with minimal time, budget, and hassle.

In our daily lives, we're surrounded by wires, pipes, utility poles, cell phone towers, and myriad other infrastructure that facilitates almost everything we do. Even though these systems are essential, when was the last time you gave them much thought? In On the Grid, Scott Huler sets out to understand all of the systems that shape our society - from transportation, water, and garbage to the Internet coming through our cable lines.

Ignition! is the story of the search for a rocket propellant which could be trusted to take man into space. This search was a hazardous enterprise carried out by rival labs who worked against the known laws of nature, with no guarantee of success or safety. John Drury Clark writes with irreverent and eyewitness immediacy about the development of the explosive fuels strong enough to negate the relentless restraints of gravity. The resulting volume is as much a memoir as a work of history, sharing a behind-the-scenes view of an enterprise that eventually took men to the moon.

In his earlier bestselling nonfiction book, How to Survive the End of the World as We Know It, James Wesley, Rawles, outlined the foundations for survivalist living. Now, he details the tools needed to survive anything from a short-term disruption to a long-term, grid-down scenario. Rawles covers tools for every aspect of self sufficient living.

In this smart and funny book, celebrated cartoonist Zach Weinersmith and noted researcher Dr. Kelly Weinersmith give us a snapshot of what's coming next - from robot swarms to nuclear fusion powered-toasters. By weaving their own research and interviews with the scientists who are making these advances happen, the Weinersmiths investigate why these technologies are needed, how they would work, and what is standing in their way.

Bill Gates shares what he's learned in more than a decade of studying climate change and investing in innovations to address the problems, and sets out a vision for how the world can build the tools it needs to get to zero greenhouse gas emissions. Bill Gates explains why he cares so deeply about climate change and what makes him optimistic that the world can avoid the most dire effects of the climate crisis. Gates says, "We can work on a local, national, and global level to build the technologies, businesses, and industries to avoid the worst impacts of climate change."

In his nonfiction, William T. Vollmann has won acclaim as a singular voice tackling some of the most important issues of our age. Now, Vollmann turns to a topic that will define the generations to come - the factors and human actions that have led to global warming. Vollmann begins No Immediate Danger by examining and quantifying the many causes of climate change, from industrial manufacturing and agricultural practices to fossil fuel extraction, economic demand for electric power, and the justifiable yearning of people all over the world to live in comfort.

Regarded as one of the brightest young scientists of his generation, Lewis Dartnell proposes that the key to preserving civilization in an apocalyptic scenario is to provide a quickstart guide, adapted to cataclysmic circumstances. The Knowledge describes many of the modern technologies we employ, but first it explains the fundamentals upon which they are built. The Knowledge is a brilliantly original guide to the fundamentals of science and how it built our modern world as well as a thought experiment about the very idea of scientific knowledge itself.

Since the beginning of human history Mars has been an alluring dream - the stuff of legends, gods, and mystery. The planet most like ours, it has still been thought impossible to reach, let alone explore and inhabit. Now with the advent of a revolutionary new plan, all this has changed. Leading space exploration authority Robert Zubrin has crafted a daring new blueprint, Mars Direct, presented here with engaging anecdotes. The Case for Mars is not a vision for the far future or one that will cost us impossible billions.

James Wesley Rawles, founder of survivalblog.com, shares with you everything you need to know to be ready for the worst. The book includes information on proper food storage and sanitation, gardening and livestock basics, investment strategies to protect your assets, medical advice, communication techniques, home security, and how to get "outta Dodge" when, in the parlance of the movement, "the shit hits the fan".

What would you do if a time machine hurled you thousands of years into the past...and then broke? How would you survive? With this book as your guide, you'll survive - and thrive - in any period in Earth's history. Best-selling author and time-travel enthusiast Ryan North tells you how to invent all the modern conveniences we take for granted - from first principles. This manual contains all the science, engineering, art, philosophy, facts, and figures required for even the most clueless time traveler to build a civilization from the ground up.

The Upcycle is the eagerly awaited follow-up to Cradle to Cradle, the most consequential ecological manifesto of our time. Now, drawing on the lessons gained from 10 years of putting the cradle-to-cradle concept into practice with businesses, governments, and ordinary people, William McDonough and Michael Braungart envision the next step in the solution to our ecological crisis: We don't just reuse resources with greater effectiveness, we actually improve them as we use them.

Hailed as the new essential resource for bikers, Let's Ride is today's most entertaining and authoritative guide to mastering the art of motorcycling. From choosing the right bike and keeping it finely maintained to sharpening riding techniques and achieving top performance, legendary biker icon Sonny Barger mines his lifetime of experience to provide advice, wisdom, wit, and never-before-told stories that will help fellow riders - new and veteran alike - survive the challenges of the road.

With real-world considerations in mind, disaster preparedness consultant David Black shows us how to stay alive when tragedy strikes. His step-by-step actions can help us make it safely through a variety of crises, from catastrophic weather to terrorism to civil unrest. Black presents tailor-made plans for individuals, businesses, organizations, small groups, and communities to follow, in all regions of the country and broken down by type of emergency and environment.

As smartphones, supercomputers, supercolliders, and AI propel us into an ever more unfamiliar future, How to Speak Science takes us on a rollicking historical tour of the greatest discoveries and ideas that make today's cutting-edge technologies possible. Wanting everyone to be able to "speak" science, YouTube science guru Bruce Benamran explains - as accessibly and wittily as in his acclaimed videos - the fundamental ideas of the physical world: matter, life, the solar system, light, electromagnetism, thermodynamics, special and general relativity, and much more.