Residential Solar Power – Get Energy From the Sun and Reduce Your Energy Bills!
October 9, 2010 by SolarInfo
Filed under News And Society
John Greenspan asked:
Residential solar power can be generated by converting solar radiation into electricity. This can in turn by converted to other forms of energy to serve your household needs. As solar power is a type of renewable energy, it is clean and environmentally friendly. More than that, solar energy is available in abundance and will continue to be for another few million years.
Solar radiation can either be converted into electricity or it can be used to heat up air and water. Heat that's absorbed into air can be used to warm your room. Water heated by solar radiation can be used for a hot shower or to fill up your pool. When solar energy is converted to electricity using solar panels, there is no limit to what you can do with it. This is the most common way of tapping solar power for residential use.
A solar (photovoltaic) panel typically consists of sections of inter-connected semi-conductor cells. A cluster of such panels, called an array, adds up the individual power production to form higher energy.
Photovoltaic panels have to be placed in a location exposed to direct sunlight. Very often, your roof is the ideal place for solar panels to rest on. There, panels are kept out of sight. And they are not sheltered by vegetation.
The light collected by photovoltaic panels is transformed into electrical energy with the help of PV cells. Direct current (DC) is generated, which are then converted into AC current with the help of an inverter. When sufficient electricity is generated from the sun, they are fed into the mains to form a grid-tied system.
Homeowners with property in remote locations may often want their solar power generators to be off-grid. As such, they will need a storage bank to store electricity they can tap on during the night.
In recent years, more and more homeowners have turned to solar energy to bring down their ever-increasing electricity bills. A major factor that prevents more homeowners to adopt solar power is its cost. While it's true that photovoltaic panels now cost only a tenth of what is used to, a full setup still sets you back by at least twenty to thirty thousand dollars.
Your dependence on fossil fuel can be reduced if cheaper home solar panels are available. Fortunately, manufacturers also make photovoltaic modules for sale to the public. You can put these together to build your own residential solar power panels at low cost and generate electricity for free! However, there are many potholes on the road to success. Having an expert to guide you along reduce your learning curve and saves you from costly mistakes. Alternatively, books written by experts help you avoid many frustrations too.
Home Alarm
Residential solar power can be generated by converting solar radiation into electricity. This can in turn by converted to other forms of energy to serve your household needs. As solar power is a type of renewable energy, it is clean and environmentally friendly. More than that, solar energy is available in abundance and will continue to be for another few million years.
Solar radiation can either be converted into electricity or it can be used to heat up air and water. Heat that's absorbed into air can be used to warm your room. Water heated by solar radiation can be used for a hot shower or to fill up your pool. When solar energy is converted to electricity using solar panels, there is no limit to what you can do with it. This is the most common way of tapping solar power for residential use.
A solar (photovoltaic) panel typically consists of sections of inter-connected semi-conductor cells. A cluster of such panels, called an array, adds up the individual power production to form higher energy.
Photovoltaic panels have to be placed in a location exposed to direct sunlight. Very often, your roof is the ideal place for solar panels to rest on. There, panels are kept out of sight. And they are not sheltered by vegetation.
The light collected by photovoltaic panels is transformed into electrical energy with the help of PV cells. Direct current (DC) is generated, which are then converted into AC current with the help of an inverter. When sufficient electricity is generated from the sun, they are fed into the mains to form a grid-tied system.
Homeowners with property in remote locations may often want their solar power generators to be off-grid. As such, they will need a storage bank to store electricity they can tap on during the night.
In recent years, more and more homeowners have turned to solar energy to bring down their ever-increasing electricity bills. A major factor that prevents more homeowners to adopt solar power is its cost. While it's true that photovoltaic panels now cost only a tenth of what is used to, a full setup still sets you back by at least twenty to thirty thousand dollars.
Your dependence on fossil fuel can be reduced if cheaper home solar panels are available. Fortunately, manufacturers also make photovoltaic modules for sale to the public. You can put these together to build your own residential solar power panels at low cost and generate electricity for free! However, there are many potholes on the road to success. Having an expert to guide you along reduce your learning curve and saves you from costly mistakes. Alternatively, books written by experts help you avoid many frustrations too.
Home Alarm
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Solar Power – History
September 18, 2010 by SolarInfo
Filed under News And Society
Dan G Carter asked:
Solar power has been part of the way people cook, warm their homes and meet the energy needs of their life for thousands of years. In ancient Greece, builders would face the homes to obtain the benefits of the winter sun. In fact, some people believe that as early as 212 BC solar energy was being used by Archimedes. Legends tell of how Archimedes used reflective surfaces to burn enemy ships. It was not until the 1860s that solar energy moved from passive use of solar energy to a more active use.
August Mouchout in 1861 invented the first solar motor. However, the high costs of production in the 1860s could not compete with fossil fuels. Many believed that the supply of fossil fuel would never run out. When the price of coal dropped the high cost of the proposed solar powered motor doomed it to failure. This did not however stop or even stifle interest in solar power.
John Ericsson, also known for the design of the USS Monitor created a parabolic trough collector. This technology and way of solar energy collection was used for more than a hundred years later with little change in design. Around 1900 William Grylls Adams discovered the effect of sunlight on selenium. The selenium released electrons and contributed to the production of electricity.
It was not until 1921 with Albert Einstein's Nobel Prize winning research on photoelectric effect that solar energy started to gain a foothold in research and development. It took an addition 32 years before Gerald Pearson, Calvin Fuller and Daryl Chaplin of Bell Laboratories developed a solar cell made of silicon that was capable of producing an electrical current that was measurable. This is where solar power began to become an active development product for energy research.
The largest difficulty solar power faced was cost. In 1956, just three years after the development of the first silicon cell the cost for a single watt was $300. The 1950s and 1960s however, saw some advancement due to the Space Race. Many satellites and spacecraft make use of solar panels for their electricity needs.
When the Arab Oil Embargo doubled oil prices in 1973, solar energy became top on the list of energy research as government leaders looked for a means of reducing the dependence on fossil fuels. As a result, the U.S. government invested in alternative energy research and the silicon cell produced in 1953. The use of solar energy as a mainstream alternative however would not appear until the 1990s when costs declined and allowed solar energy to become competitive against fossil fuels.
Solar power gained international notice when in 2002 Japan installed solar panels on 25,000 rooftops. Large-scale orders such as this one drove market prices down and increased demand for solar panels and solar powered water heating devices. This in turn increased research into materials, designs and improvements to help make solar panels and cells produce greater amounts of electricity in smaller spaces.
Digital Camera
Solar power has been part of the way people cook, warm their homes and meet the energy needs of their life for thousands of years. In ancient Greece, builders would face the homes to obtain the benefits of the winter sun. In fact, some people believe that as early as 212 BC solar energy was being used by Archimedes. Legends tell of how Archimedes used reflective surfaces to burn enemy ships. It was not until the 1860s that solar energy moved from passive use of solar energy to a more active use.
August Mouchout in 1861 invented the first solar motor. However, the high costs of production in the 1860s could not compete with fossil fuels. Many believed that the supply of fossil fuel would never run out. When the price of coal dropped the high cost of the proposed solar powered motor doomed it to failure. This did not however stop or even stifle interest in solar power.
John Ericsson, also known for the design of the USS Monitor created a parabolic trough collector. This technology and way of solar energy collection was used for more than a hundred years later with little change in design. Around 1900 William Grylls Adams discovered the effect of sunlight on selenium. The selenium released electrons and contributed to the production of electricity.
It was not until 1921 with Albert Einstein's Nobel Prize winning research on photoelectric effect that solar energy started to gain a foothold in research and development. It took an addition 32 years before Gerald Pearson, Calvin Fuller and Daryl Chaplin of Bell Laboratories developed a solar cell made of silicon that was capable of producing an electrical current that was measurable. This is where solar power began to become an active development product for energy research.
The largest difficulty solar power faced was cost. In 1956, just three years after the development of the first silicon cell the cost for a single watt was $300. The 1950s and 1960s however, saw some advancement due to the Space Race. Many satellites and spacecraft make use of solar panels for their electricity needs.
When the Arab Oil Embargo doubled oil prices in 1973, solar energy became top on the list of energy research as government leaders looked for a means of reducing the dependence on fossil fuels. As a result, the U.S. government invested in alternative energy research and the silicon cell produced in 1953. The use of solar energy as a mainstream alternative however would not appear until the 1990s when costs declined and allowed solar energy to become competitive against fossil fuels.
Solar power gained international notice when in 2002 Japan installed solar panels on 25,000 rooftops. Large-scale orders such as this one drove market prices down and increased demand for solar panels and solar powered water heating devices. This in turn increased research into materials, designs and improvements to help make solar panels and cells produce greater amounts of electricity in smaller spaces.
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