Since ancient times, people have found ways to use the sun’s heat to stay warm or keep cool. They built homes from clay and other materials that hold heat well, and they placed them in ways that ...

As I discussed in last week’s column ("Resilience: Dramatically Better Building Envelopes," Jan. 4), a resilient home is extremely well-insulated, so that it can be kept warm with very little ...

Over the past two weeks, I’ve written about two relatively obscure passive solar heating strategies: Isolated gain using sunspaces, and; indirect gain using a Trombe walls. This week I’ll cover a far ...

Heating houses is a major energy suck. Behind passenger cars and trucking, it’s the largest energy draw in the United States. But it turns out homeowners looking to stay warm don’t need to rely just ...

There are two general types of solar energy systems. Active systems use mechanical equipment like solar collectors to accomplish a task such as heating water. Passive systems use the structural ...

When it comes to renewable energy at home, solar panels are often the first option that comes to mind, leaving homeowners with the choice between monocrystalline or polycrystalline solar panels, and ...

The passive-house building standard relies on lots of insulation and intentional design to use as little energy as possible for heating and cooling. "Things like 'passive house' have become more ...

An international research team has built a cooling tech consisting of heat absorber pipes that are thermally connected to the PV module, heat releaser pipes that exchange heat with the water body, a ...

An international research team has designed a novel cooling system for PV modules involving a phase change material (PCM), heat sink fins, and water. The experimental system utilizes passive cooling, ...