How to Find DIY Solar Incentives for Your State

DIY solar kit installation can be a fun, rewarding and financially lucrative project.

As you're preparing to slash your power bills and exercise your energy independence, keep a few things in mind during the project planning phase.

If you don't understand energy incentives, for example, then you might miss out on a huge opportunity to save big money! Don't miss out on any solar incentives in your area.

What Are You Eligible For?

Whether you choose to install your own solar power system or delegate the project to a professional, the federal government offers a tax credit of 30 percent of installation costs.

Aside from this incentive, however, virtually hundreds of local, state and utility company programs are available to help you recoup some or all of your system's costs. You can find everything from low-interest loans to grants that will pay you for putting in the panels yourself.

Great news, right? But how do you find these incentives?

Search the DSIRE Site

DSIRE stands for the Database of State Incentives for Renewable Energy.

This is the place to find an up-to-date list of all the incentives available for adopting alternative energy. In planning your PV solar system, this site will be invaluable to you, not only for incentive information, but information on local statutes and governing laws as well.

Bear in mind that sometimes the amount budgeted for state incentives may run out. Fortunately, the DSIRE site can help you to get on a waiting list or get information about when the incentive will be re-funded.

Beware of Red Tape

Most state programs and other solar incentives don't have too much red tape to navigate, but some states do place certain limitations on the installation process. They may, for example, require you have the system inspected by a state-approved contractor before you will be eligible for the incentive.

Also, read the fine print about financing your system. In most cases, a leased system is not eligible for some incentives. You can certainly finance your equipment if you prefer, just as long as you own it.

Remember the Value of Installation

One last word about system cost, before you apply for your incentives. If you're doing a DIY solar kit installation, remember that the installation portion of the system has value.

The federal tax credit, for example, is calculated based on the total cost of the system, including installation. So, even if you were the installer, that work adds to your total cost.

Contact solar installation contractors in your area and ask for a ballpark figure of what professional installation would cost. Bear in mind that contractors have profit and overhead in their costs, so add only about half the professional cost to your equipment price to obtain your total value.

If you're finally ready to achieve true energy independence and generate your own free power using the sun's energy, a do-it-yourself PV system may be the way to go. You'll save big money while still enjoying all the advantages of alternative energy. Check out a DIY solar equipment source online or in your area to learn more.



By Jen Stott 

Special Report: The Amazon Is the New Frontier for Deadly Wildlife Tourism

 On a wooden platform in a tiny village on the longest river in the world, a giant anteater slurps pink yogurt from a plastic bucket as a man shoves a selfie stick in its face.

A pair of blue macaws crunches on cheese puffs. A toucan nibbles a saltine cracker. Sixty tourists screech, squeal, and cackle as they paw at a menagerie of wild animals. Sloths cling to human necks. Monkeys scramble over heads and shoulders. On a bench two turtles strain for freedom under the weight of human hands.

While animals are passed among the crowd, camera shutters click, and selfie sticks jut out at all angles. A woman holds a juvenile caiman, mouth agape, next to the head of her infant child. A teenage girl chatters as she wraps an anaconda around her torso, fodder for a selfie video.

People throw tips in a bucket and head back down the platform stairs. They’ve had their fill, and manic excitement gives way to seeming indifference.

Spend days, even weeks, in the Amazon jungle and you may, if you’re lucky, see a wild sloth inching up a tree or catch the glow of a caiman’s eyes on the river at night. But coming face-to-face with any one of these animals is unlikely. All of them? Impossible.

Yet here atop this rickety platform on stilts along the banks of the Peruvian Amazon, such an experience is assured. This is a one-stop wildlife shop.

Puerto Alegría, a town with just 600 families, sits in a sun-drenched spot on the Amazon called Tres Fronteras—the Triple Frontier—where Peru, Colombia, and Brazil meet. Every day hundreds of tourists, mostly from the Colombian side of the river, arrive by boat, walk up wooden planks from the water to the shore, and clamor to hold and take photos with as many as a hundred captive wild animals of two dozen species.

The influx is an economic boon for Puerto Alegríans, at the ready with snacks and sodas, baskets for tips, and canteen shops filled with local crafts.

Wildlife tourism is big business, likely accounting for 20 to 40 percent of the global tourism industry’s annual value of $1.5 trillion, according to the World Tourism Organization.

Conservation and animal welfare groups agree that when an activity involving wildlife crosses the line from observation to interaction, it’s bad for the animals. In Southeast Asia riding elephants and petting captive tiger cubs, for instance, have drawn attention to the dark side of wildlife tourism.

Tourism in the Amazon is still in its infancy. In the huge Brazilian state of Amazonas, it accounts for just one percent of GDP. But prospering economies in Latin America and easier access through more frequent, affordable international flights mean that tourism—especially wildlife tourism—may be poised to explode.

The Amazon harbors more than 10 percent of the planet’s biodiversity—400 species of mammals, 200 species of reptiles, and 1,300 species of birds. Tourists generally have two options for experiencing this bounty: the authentic way or the quick way. To see the raw, wild Amazon, people typically embark on a jungle excursion that lasts at least three or four days and can cost hundreds of dollars. For travelers short on time and money, the alternative is a day tour. Offered by dozens of travel agencies in each port town, most of these hit several spots in one day, providing a quick taste of the jungle.

The Report has been collected from National Geography

Empowering Special Education

Special education refers to unconventional education services designed to cater to the needs of individuals suffering from physical and mental drawbacks such as physical handicaps, sensory (visual and hearing) impairments, intellectual capacity (mental retardation and autism), learning disabilities (reading and writing skills), speech impairment and those with behavior disorders. It seeks to address problems of the individual, as well as provide effective solutions through a set of formulated instructions, service aids and supports, learning techniques and transitions services.

The goal of special education is to address the needs of these special individuals (children, youth and adults) and ensure that they gain equal access to quality education regardless of their condition. In effect, it encourages them to keep up with the challenges of normal education and help improve their chances for success in life.

Specialized method of Education

The primary focus of this special type of education is to provide support and learning techniques to the individual. Children are properly educated in the most learning-conducive environment to help them discover their in-depth skills and abilities hidden behind the disabilities they might have.

But not everyone can employ this educational service. As such, before the person can avail of it, different levels of evaluations must take place. The processes can vary, though the primary stages include referral, parental consent, child evaluation and review and recommendation of appropriate institutionalized methods.

An afterthought...

In today's society there are more than 6 million children and youth estimated to be suffering from disabilities, and the demand for special education has grown by leaps and bounds. By properly dealing with the issues and problems concerned and finding solutions, special education can give them the chance to stand up and be on equal footing with their peers, drawing out their true potentials as key movers and prime contributors to society regardless of their physical and mental difficulties.


Source: ezinearticles

Coral Reefs are in danger

"Twenty percent of the world's coral reefs have been effectively destroyed or show no immediate prospects of recovery," said the report, issued on the first day of a United Nations environmental conference in Buenos Aires lasting until December 17.

The Status of Coral Reefs of the World 2004 also said that another "24 percent of the world's reefs are under imminent risk of collapse through human pressures, and a further 26 percent are under a longer-term threat of collapse."

"The major emerging threat to coral reefs in the past decade has been coral bleaching and mortality associated with global climate change," it said.

Bleaching is a mass death of corals caused by a sudden rise in ocean temperatures.

Even so, it said some reefs had recovered sharply from a 1998 bleaching which seriously damaged 16 percent of all reefs worldwide, especially in the western Pacific and the Indian Ocean.

"About 40 percent of the reefs that were seriously damaged in 1998 are either recovering well or have recovered," it said. Some of the report's highlights were issued in Bangkok in November.

It said the 1998 global warming had been the most serious in 1 000 years but was likely to happen about every 50 years in future, largely because of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere from burning fossil fuels in cars, factories or power stations.

Corals are formed by a build-up of limestone skeletons left by tiny marine animals called polyps. The graveyards can become giant structures like the Great Barrier Reef off Australia, colourful homes to thousands of species from sharks to seaweed.

The report said nations around the world should do more to cut pollution, restrict fishing and fight to curb emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide to protect corals.

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) environmental group, which took part in the report, urged governments meeting in Buenos Aires to set a goal of limiting a rises in temperatures linked to global warming to 2°C.

"To save coral reefs, governments must reduce carbon dioxide emissions quickly, but also create marine protected areas," said Simon Cripps, head of the WWF's global marine programme. Temperatures have risen by 0.6°C since the late 1800s.

The report said the major success of the past five years had been strict protection of a third of the Great Barrier Reef by Australia. The United States is taking similar steps off Hawaii and Florida.

But 75 percent of coral reefs are in developing countries where human populations are rising rapidly and millions depend on reefs for food.



Source: ezinearticles