MaxiArticle.net Your Free Article Directory – Articles Submission

With growing worries with regards to hazardous pollution, climbing electricity fees, and dwindling supplies of fossil fuels, the desire to take advantage of solar powered energy is growing quickly. Very few, however, really know what a complete solar power system is, as most available information and facts concentrates on commercial or DO-IT-YOURSELF solar panels, failing to cover the rest of what is required to build a truly useful system. This article is going to make clear the 4 components of a complete solar powered energy system, so, should you decide to convert to solar energy, you’ll fully understand precisely what you are getting into.

Residential solar panels

An individual solar panel has 3 major components, a housing unit, solar cells, and a wiring system. Housing units are normally constructed with metal support frames, generally aluminum, some kind of backing, which can be produced from a variety of materials, and a glass, or Plexiglas, front cover. The housing unit needs to be ridged, durable and waterproof, as moisture or warping can cause damage. Mounted on the backing are a number of solar cells. Frequently, solar panels will have thirty-six cells, but this can vary based on the voltage of the cells and also the desired output of each panel. These solar cells are normally manufactured from silicon. When the sun sinks into this material electrons are released, resulting in an electrical current. This current is then sent through, and, ultimately, out of the panel by the wiring system. The wiring system on the solar panel itself is made of what is called tabbing wire. This is a long flat wire that gets soldered to the rear of each cell in the solar panel, connecting them and making it possible for current to pass through from one cell to another. Also part of the solar panel wiring system is what’s termed a blocking diode. This is the little yet important device that blocks current from reversing and traveling back into the solar panel.

Storage Devices

Residential solar panels do not produce sufficient power in real-time to power people’s gadgets, nor do they produce any electrical power whatsoever once the sun goes down. In order to overcome this issue, we need to incorporate the use of a power storage system, namely battery packs. The key piece of information regarding batteries is that they are 12 volts, a fact that determines the required voltage production of most solar panels. Another essential bit of information about batteries in solar power systems is that they have to be what are called deep cycle batteries. Deep cycle batteries are manufactured to be charged up and then fully depleted, time and time again. If you did this, for example, with common automobile batteries, you would ruin them quite swiftly. Finally, as one battery just isn’t sufficient for the demands of most systems, one must wire a host of batteries together. This group of connected batteries is called a battery bank.

Charge Controllers

A fully functioning array of solar panels will produce great amounts of electrical energy the entire day. At times, though, our batteries are completely charged, and if fully charged batteries are fed a steady current of power, they will become damaged. It is very important, therefore, to install a device that can determine the amount of charge in a battery bank and then use that information to manage the amount of energy delivered to them. The device that does this is named a charge controller.

Power Inverter

The last piece of a complete solar power system is what is called the power inverter. As stated above, battery banks are 12-volt systems. In addition, they use what is called a direct current system, or, for short, a DC system. The devices in one’s house, in contrast, use 120-volt alternating current, or AC, systems. Due to this, we’ve got to convert the 12-volt DC power originating from our battery banks into 120-volt AC power before we can put it to use to power our appliances.

Putting It All Together

If you want to power your house with solar power, remember that you’ll need more than just the solar panels that create electricity. You will also need a battery bank to store your power, a charge controller to manage your power, and an inverter to transform your energy into a form that you can actually use. A system that’s lacking any of the abovementioned components is just not going to perform. Many thanks for reading, and I wish you the very best with all your do it yourself projects.

Come by Make Energy Now and learn how to make your own homemade solar panels.

Prefer wind turbines? Great! Come by and I’ll show you how to build domestic wind turbines.

See you soon!