Solar Power How It Works To Power Your Home
There are two main types of solar power, solar thermal and photovoltaic. Solar thermal uses the sun light's infrared energy to either heat a liquid or to warm a mass of material that will later on release its stored heat. Harnessing solar thermal energy involves building a house in such a way to collect the sun's heat during the day and radiate it into the home during the evening. However, in the summer time the house's construction uses mass to keep the sun's heat out of the home.
Solar photovoltaic energy converting sun light into electrical energy. The most commonly associated component are the photovoltaic panels or solar panels that you see mounted on roofs.
This article will be focusing on how photovoltaic solar power (solar panels) and systems work.
Why are solar photovoltaic panels always on the south (or north) side of the roof?
In order to get the maximum electrical output from photovoltaic panels they need to be oriented to solar south in the northern hemisphere and solar north in the southern hemisphere. Solar north and solar south are the same as magnetic or compass north or south. There is about a fifteen degree difference between them.
Most solar photovoltaic panels are set at home latitude plus fifteen degrees or home latitude minus fifteen degrees. Depending on if you want a summer or winter bias to the angle of the solar panels. In higher latitudinal areas it makes more sense to have the photovoltaic panels set on a winter bias, so that during the winter the solar panels still get enough sun light to produce electricity.
How does a photovoltaic cell produce electricity?
A solar panel consists of a collection of photovoltaic cells. Each photovoltaic cell is made up of silicon wafer. Silicon in its pure state is a poor electrical conductor. During the manufacturing process, an impurity is added to the silicon so that when the photons (light) strikes the wafer electrons are released and create electrical current.
The type of electrical current produced by a solar panel is a low voltage direct current, or DC, typically in the range of six to twenty four volts. Photovoltaic panels have a nominal output voltage of 12 volts and an effective operating voltage of 17 or more volts.
A solar panel's electrical output is affected by several factors. They are angle of the photovoltaic panels to the sun, time of day, time of the year and weather conditions. Solar photovoltaic panels produce more electricity during the middle of the day when the sun is directly overhead compared to the early morning and late evening when the sun light is striking the solar panel at a shallow angle.
Components of a residential solar power system
A residential solar power system consists of four components are: photovoltaic panels, charging controller, battery pack and an inverter. The photovoltaic panels convert sun light into electricity. The electricity is sent to the charging controller who keeps the battery pack fully charged, but not over charged. The battery pack sends the electricity to the inverter who converts the DC voltage to household AC at 120 volts and 60 hertz.
Photovoltaic panel
The output of a solar panel is stated in watts. The wattage is stated is typically for peak sun hours. Since the amount of sun light varies through the course of a day, to level out the variations the peak sun hours has been adopted by most manufactures to help installers and customer's compare different solar panel models.
Suppose a solar panel is rated for 100 watts and an average of six peak sun hours is available per day. Then the solar panel would produce 100 watts * 6 peak hours = 600 watt hours of electricity or 0.6 kilo watt hours (KWh).
Charging controller
Charging controller or charge regulator controls the charging of the battery pack. It continually monitors the battery pack's charge state. If the batteries are low, it will send electricity from the solar panels to the batteries. It also prevents over charging of the battery pack.
Don't allow someone to convince you that a charging controller is not really required. Directly connecting the photovoltaic panels to the battery pack can permanently damage the batteries and possibly cause them to explode.
Battery pack
The battery pack's purpose is to store electricity generated by the solar panels during the day and then at night or during extremely cloudy days provide electricity to the inverter.
The battery pack typically consists of lead acid batteries. Lead acid batteries are relatively inexpensive and readily available. There are many different types, sizes and capacities of batteries available. The most popular are gel cell and AGM deep cycle batteries because they are maintenance free and last a lot longer than wet cell lead acid batteries.
The most important thing to remember about the batteries is that the need to be deep cycle. Deep cycle batteries are designed to be discharged then recharged hundreds if not thousands of times. A deep cycle battery is designed to discharged to nearly empty, but not completely and then be slowly recharged over time. A common mistake for home owners is to think that they can use automotive batteries instead of deep cycle batteries. Car batteries are shallow cycle batteries. They are designed to discharge a lot of current quickly and then be immediately recharged.
Inverter
An inverter converts the DC electricity stored in the battery pack into household 120V AC. Almost everything in your home is powered by 120V electricity. Things like table lamps, freezer, lights, motors, dishwasher, and so on.
There are two main types of inverters sine wave and modified sine wave. The power company provides electricity as a sine wave. The electricity's charge value goes smoothly from positive 120V to 0V to negative 120V and then back up to 0V and finally up to positive 120V. Then the cycle begins all over again. The time it takes to go through the entire cycle is one second.
Modified sine wave is also known as a square wave. Here the electricity's charge value goes from positive 120V to negative -120 volts in effectively zero seconds.
Most household devices will function on a modified sine wave power. Light bulbs and motors will work, just not quite as efficiently as they would on sine wave electricity. However, there are some electronic devices that will not work on square wave electricity. It will be necessary to check with the manufacture to determine if the device will work on square wave electricity.
Now you have a basic understanding of solar power how it works to power your home. Now you have enough information about how solar power works to determine if it is a technology that you would want to invest in for your house.
Frequently Asked Questions
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QUESTION:
Briefly, In A Couple Of Paragraphs, Please Explain How Solar Power Works???
Coherently, please explain in a few paragraphs how does solar power work: How is the energy concocted, how is it then supplied to industries and how do solar power organisations make their money. Thanks-
ANSWER:
Solar Thermal Energy is collected in a number of ways. Firstly there's the thermal solar collectors.At the simplest this a "cold-frame" containing a zig-zig of thin pipe, usually painted black. This usually used to heat water, but not usually so that it boils. The "cold frame" allows in visible radiation, and when the radiation hits the inside of the box, much of it is converted into infra-red, ie heat, which the glass lid prevents from escaping (It's just like the greenhouse effect). pipes then take the heat out.
Then there's solar collectors which use a mirror, to concentrate the sun's heat onto a small space (works much like using a magnifying glass to set fire to paper). This heat can be used to boil water, or sometimes used to melt metals.
Photo-voltaic solar panels, work because photon ("particles" of light), can knock electrons off atoms. In special materials, like certain semiconductors, the electrons find it difficult to flow the way they came, and so will flow along a wire connecting the two sides of the panel.
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Generally solar power is used at source. Thermal panels provide low grade heat, but even that can work to reduce fuel bills. Of thermal solar power devices, It's only really solar concentrators that can be used to generate electricity, for transportation/use in other industries, as only it provides heat that's of high enough "grade" to power steam turbines.Photo-voltaic panels, generate DC which is awkward to transport without significant losses, so again it tends to be used at source. In the future it might become the cheapest method of generating hydrogen (by electrolysis), which could then be stored/transported and used as a fuel.
How do they make money? A large proportion of the cost of generating power/making a product is the cost of fuel consumed in making the power/product. By choosing fuel/methods which are cheaper these overheads can be reduced, making a cheaper, and hopefully more competitive product. If water needs to be boiled as part of a process, some energy is saved, even if the water isn't boiled by the sun.
While Solar plants generally require more initial investment, there running costs are usually lower,as the don't burn fuel (It's not zero, as repairs/replacement etc are still needed) Once a plant has recoup the cost of building it, they're usually very cheep to run.
Don't think that they're able to get money from form carbon-trading (there's a slight increase in carbon, during building, which isn't recouped), but they might get some for using renewables.
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Opp's sorry for the length! Hope it helps anyway.
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QUESTION:
Can someone explain how solar power works?
or point me somewhere that does? I understand the whole thing about the grid collecting power and transferring it, but i'm looking for the technical specifics, and trying to figure out why the grid needs to be so big and solid. Thanks in advance for anyone who can at least point me in the right direction!-
ANSWER:
The basics of solar power.Solar power is probably the cleanest, most viable form of renewable energy available and it can be used in several forms to help power your house. Many gardens now use solar lights or solar garden water features. The availability and wide use of solar power in gardens shows exactly how versatile it is as a source of energy. The technology and the systems are becoming smaller, more compact and better looking than when they were first created and used. Early examples of solar power systems can be seen in California where, in the 1980s, enough solar power panels were installed to power over 10 million homes.
How do photovoltaic tiles work?
Simply put photovoltaic tiles and other forms of solar energy work by converting some of the energy in sunlight into a clean form of electricity that can be used in our houses. The PV cells consist of a positive and a negative slice of silicon placed under a thin slice of glass. As the protons of the sunlight beat down onto the PV cell they knock the neutrons off the silicon. The negatively charged free neutrons are attracted to the silicon but are trapped by the magnetic field that is formed from the opposing fields. Small wires on the silicon catch these neutrons and when connected in a circuit an electric current is formed.
This reaction gives Direct Current electricity though, and it must be passed through an inverter to be converted into an Alternating Current used in our homes to power any electrical items. Some of the power is lost in this part of the process as the inverter is only around 95% efficient but this is a much greater efficiency than was once available.
The nature of the PV cell means there is little or no maintenance required and there are no moving parts; this means that a typical PV cell can last up to 40 years with no work besides an annual clean.
How can I use them to power my house?
There are several ways to use solar power around the house and not just for powering. You can use it to heat your hot water, heat your pool or even your central heating or if you have plenty of roof space and a reasonable amount of sun you can get a grid tie system; a grid tie system means that not only can you power your entire house but during those times when you create an excess of electricity you can sell it back to the grid. An efficiently solar powered home will be able to reasonably create between 75 and 100% of their own power and because of the grid tie system this means you may not have to pay for electricity ever again.
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QUESTION:
How renewable energy solar power works?
My father is asking me to post a question about this.He is planning to buy an alternative renewable energy resources.Is it true that you will save electricity from alternative home energy solutions? Any suggestions and help on this post is highly appreciated thanks.-
ANSWER:
You can use renewable energy sources since it can be replenished in a short period of time. A the same time you can help the environment. And the best is it will never run out of sources of renewable energy as long as humans will exist. I found this website it says http://fastfreehomeenergy.com/alternative-energy-home.html "Many people (including myself) have reportedly slashed their monthly electricity bill by up to 80% through the methods mentioned above. If we can do it, so can you.". Just check this out for more details.
I hope i was bale to contribute a bit on your question.
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QUESTION:
what are some websites for how solar power works??? everywhere from the sun to the energy?-
ANSWER:
http://usa4energy.com
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