Set sprinklers to water the lawn or garden only - not the street or sidewalk.
Use the microwave to cook small meals. (It uses less power than an oven.)
Purchase "Green Power" for your home's electricity. (Contact your power supplier to see where and if it is available.)
Scrape, rather than rinse, dishes before loading into the dishwasher; wash only full loads.
Cut back on air conditioning and heating use if you can.
Turn off appliances and lights when you leave the room.
WASHINGTON -- Perhaps Johnny Nash should be singing, "I can see energy now."
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have developed a system that turns windows into a solar collector, letting people see clearly while collecting energy.
A coating on the glass channels photons of light to a solar collector around the edge of the window, MIT electrical engineer Marc Baldo and colleagues report in Friday's edition of the journal Science.
"We think this is a practical technology for reducing the cost of solar power," Baldo said in a statement.
The glass coatings absorb incoming light and then re-emit the energy into the glass, which conducts it to solar cells. The coatings can vary from bright colors to chemicals that are mostly transparent.
The materials are not expensive and can be added to existing solar panels, the researchers said, adding that they believe the technology could find its way to the marketplace within three years.
