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Are you puzzled by the varied terms solar power installers use when describing a residential solar power system? Does it make you head spin? Notice out how solar power works. Learn the basic terminology thus that you’ll build an informed choice on if residential solar power is the right renewable energy source for your home.

With the rising price of electricity purchased from the local electrical company, individuals are starting to explore alternative ways of powering their home. Solar power in the form of electricity generation is additionally called solar photovoltaic energy converts sun light-weight into electricity. The foremost commonly associated component of a solar power system are the photovoltaic panels or solar panels that you simply see mounted on roofs.

Why are solar panels mounted on the roof?

So as to urge the most electrical output from photovoltaic panels they have to be oriented to solar south in the northern hemisphere and solar north in the southern hemisphere. The solar panels would like to be facing toward the equator to get maximum sun exposure.

Most solar photovoltaic panels are set at home latitude and fifteen degrees or home latitude minus fifteen degrees. Depending on if you would like a summer or winter bias to the angle of the solar panels. In higher latitudinal areas it makes more sense to possess the photovoltaic panels set on a winter bias, therefore that during the winter the solar panels still get enough sun light to produce electricity.

How does a photovoltaic cell turn out electricity?

A solar panel consists of a assortment of photovoltaic cells. Each photovoltaic cell is created up of silicon wafer. During the manufacturing method, an impurity is added to the silicon to form conduct electricity. The sun’s photons strike the solar cell and cause an electron to break free. This action creates a small electrical charge. The metal grid that you simply see on the surface of the photovoltaic cell captures the electrical charge and channels it to the solar panel’s terminals.

Solar panels produce a form of electricity known as DC or direct current. The voltage produced is taken into account low voltage in the vary of six to 24 volts. Photovoltaic panels have a nominal output voltage of 12 volts and an efficient operating voltage of 17 or a lot of volts.

A solar panel’s electrical output is littered with many factors. They are angle of the photovoltaic panels to the sun, time of day, spell and weather conditions. Solar photovoltaic panels turn out the foremost electricity throughout the middle of the day when the sun is directly overhead compared to the early morning and late evening when the sun lightweight is hanging the solar panel at a shallow angle relative to the panel’s face. Suppose about it, within the summer in the center of the day doesn’t the sun feel hot? However, within the evening the sun will not feel as hot. This can be as a result of within the evening the sun’s lightweight should tolerate additional of the atmosphere which is diffusing the light and energy.

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, however not over charged. The battery pack sends the electricity to the inverter who converts the DC voltage to household AC at a hundred and twenty volts and sixty hertz.

Photovoltaic panel

Solar panels are rated by their wattage. The upper the solar panel’s wattage the more expensive it will be. Since there are such a lot of different factors that affect the number of electricity created by a solar panel many manufactures provide the wattage in terms of peak sun hours. Peak sun hours are the hours when the sun is directly overhead and shining directly on the photovoltaic panel.

Charging controller

Charging controller or charge regulator controls the charging of the battery pack. It frequently monitors the battery pack’s charge state. If the batteries are low, it can feed electricity from the solar panels to the batteries. It also prevents over charging of the battery pack.

When it is night time or a cloudy day the charging controller prevents the electricity from flowing from the battery pack to the solar panels. If it didn’t do this, at night the solar power system would run in reverse and drain the batteries.

Don’t allow someone to convince you that a charging controller isn’t extremely required. Directly connecting the photovoltaic panels to the battery pack can permanently harm the batteries and presumably cause them to explode.

Battery pack

The battery pack’s purpose is to store electricity generated by the solar panels during the day. The battery pack is also connected to an inverter that in turn is connected to the house’s electrical network. When it cloudy or at night, the electricity stored in the batteries is employed to satisfy the power needs of your home.

The battery pack usually consists of lead acid batteries. Lead acid batteries are relatively inexpensive and readily available. There are many completely different sorts, sizes and capacities of batteries available. The foremost well-liked varieties of lead acid batteries are gel cell and AGM deep cycle batteries. This is as a result of they’re maintenance free and last a heap longer compared to wet cell lead acid batteries.

The most necessary factor to recollect regarding the batteries is that they have to be deep cycle. Deep cycle batteries are designed to be discharged to just about empty and slowly recharged. They will handle this cycle thousands of times before the battery is worn out.

Some residential solar power system homeowners think that they’ll replace the deep cycle batteries with automotive batteries. The automotive battery price considerably less than the deep cycle battery. The problem is that automotive batteries are designed to discharge quickly and then immediately be recharged. The act of beginning your car drains a important quantity of power from the battery. Once the engine starts the alternator begins to recharge the battery.

Inverter

An inverter converts the DC electricity stored in the battery pack into household 120V AC. Virtually everything in your home is powered by 120V electricity. A few things are powered by 240V like the air conditioner, electrical dryer, electric stove and oven.

There are 2 main sorts of inverters sine wave and changed sine wave. The ability company provides electricity as a sine wave. The electricity’s charge worth 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 everywhere again. The time it takes to go through the complete cycle is one second.

Changed sine wave is additionally referred to as a sq. wave. Here the electricity’s charge value goes from positive 120V to negative -one hundred twenty volts in effectively zero seconds. The advantage of the sq. wave inverter is that it’s more energy economical than the sine wave inverter.

Energy efficiency is a crucial issue to stay in mind in a very residential solar power system. The additional efficient the system can lead to more of the electricity created truly being utilized by you instead of being lost in the system.

Most household devices can perform on a modified sine wave power. Light bulbs and motors will work, just approximately as efficiently as they might on sine wave electricity. Compact fluorescent lightweight bulbs can offer off a hum and motors can run hotter that normal.

However, there are some electronic devices that will not work on sq. wave electricity. It will be necessary to check with the manufacture to work out if the device will work on square wave electricity or not before having your residential solar power system designed and installed.

Another perform of the inverter is to stop draining the batteries when the batteries are discharged to a bound level. Most of the time the inverter can stop draining the battery pack when the battery pack has regarding forty% of its capability remaining. Fully discharging a lead acid battery can shorten its lifespan significantly.

Whew, that was a ton of fabric about photovoltaic panels, batteries, inverters and charging controllers. With this basic understanding of solar power how it works, you’re in a higher position to work out if residential solar power is right for your house. Conjointly, when talking to solar power installers and contractors you may be able to understand what they are talking about.

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