Solar Panels For Your Home
Solar panels are a fairly modern invention that will allow you to reduce the amount of energy you need to purchase each month. There are several types of solar panels available that can be used to generate free electricity from sunlight or harvest the heat the sun provides to warm your home. Which type you choose is based on a number of factors and understanding how they work can help in your decision.
The most common type of solar panel used on homes is called a photovoltaic solar panel and is used for generating electricity. These have been available for a number of years and have improved dramatically during that time. The PV solar panels used today are several times more efficient that older models and allow you to generate all the power your home requires with a smaller initial investment.
These PV solar panels contain a collection of solar cells that are made from a silicon substrate. These solar cells have the ability to convert sunlight into electricity directly and can provide this free power to your home. Even though these solar cells produce a small amount of power individually, when a larger group of them are connected together inside of a solar panel their output can be quite substantial. A solar panel is designed to house these fragile solar cells and connect them together in a way that delivers this unified power to your home.
Solar Power For Homes
Most solar panels today are available in a number of different output powers and voltages and it’s important you select ones that can work together. Typically the higher the output voltage and current a panel provides, the better value it represents. Even though these higher producing panels are more expensive than others are, they still provide a better value for your home since you’ll need fewer of them in your system.
One other interesting development that is starting to appear with these PV solar panels is called a micro-inverter. In a typical solar power system, the solar panels deliver a DC current that then needs to be converted and regulated into an AC current that can be used by your home. This is normally done by a large box called an inverter. Because this inverter is typically located very far away from the panels, there is a bit of power lost on its travel from the panels to the inverter.
Some newer panels are doing away with the need for this larger inverter by actually incorporating a small inverter inside of each panel. This micro-inverter can do the DC to AC conversion right at the panel and eliminate much of the loss of older systems. This also simplifies the entire solar power system’s wiring and allows for easier expansion as well.
In addition to the PV solar panels available, there are also solar thermal panels you can install to warm your home or the water you use for cleaning and bathing. These solar thermal panels look very similar to their PV cousins but contain a series of tubes instead of solar cells. The solar thermal panels have a liquid circulated through the small tubes they contain that is warmed by the sun and then is transferred to your home. This type of solar thermal system is very easy to install and can do a great job of heating your home in the colder months for a very small investment.