To think that there were days that without the sun rising along the horizon peaking in through windows, there was no other source of light. Every country uses electricity and energy in different ways. Some being more efficient than others. In Cloughjordan Ireland, located in the western part of the country there is an ecovillage. This ecovillage makes life changes as a community to live a more sustainable life. The village has rows of solar panels. The solar panels are used to absorb the sun’s radiation and create
energy. Some solar panels face upwards because they need to be replaced while others are slanted backwards slightly to catch the sunlight at the correct angle. Solar panels are black because the dark color takes in more light than bright colors do. Solar panels are usually located in an open grass area so there can be a variety of rows of them. This applied in the ecovillage as well. Solar panels are a man made example of how to decrease energy usage. The country as a whole uses sources such as solar panels to try to reduce their energy usage. Even though towns are spread out, this is a commonality throughout Ireland.
There is a great amount of farmland in Ireland. Since the country never went through an industrial revolution all the locations are separated by a large amount of land. The country’s main locations are very spread out, therefore it takes a lot of gas to fill up cars for traveling. The country tries to cut down on their use of energy in other ways of life because there is no way around the need to use some type of machinery for travel. One example would be wind turbines. They are located in some open ranges of grass, where they would not disturb wildlife. The purpose of these wind turbines is to create energy. This is done through the wind blowing the blades which connects to the main rotor. This then turns a generator that creates electricity.
On the other side of the spectrum there are a few major cities in Ireland. Cities have to save energy in different ways then people located out in farmland do. A well known city in Ireland is Westport. Westport has streets roaming up hills filled with shops, restaurants, and hotels. In an area like this there is a lot of action going on because of the higher population of people. Places like Westport use more energy than lower populated locations that we mostly stayed in. To help decrease their use of energy, places like hostels have outlets that can turn on and off completely. The confusion and discussion filling the hostel in Westport was shocking. People were confused why their outlets were not working, when they were simply not turned on. This decreases the use of energy because the electricity is not constantly flowing through the outlet, it is only used when the switch is on and something is plugged in. It was very noticeable to see how different the cities and country side lived to cut down on the usage of energy in Ireland.
Source: www.Siemenswindturbine.com