Solar Power For Your Home

November 17, 2010 by SolarInfo
Filed under Home Improvement

Jeffrey Norris asked:

Most people know of solar power, but probably either don't think it's affordable or that it's too technical for the average man or woman to utilize...nothing could be farther from the truth. It is relatively expensive to run all, or even most of your household electrical items on just solar power, but any power that you get from the sun is some you won't be buying from the utility company.

If you do buy commercially available solar panels, it's not too difficult to install them.You can opt for a roof installation or mount them on a pole in your yard with the mounting brackets attached.Should you elect to go 'off the grid,' the amount of photo-voltaic (solar panels)devices you'll need will be significant. Also, a complete off-the-grid system will need to have batteries in which to store electricity for when there's no sunlight.

You can also use a generator, but then you get into having to buy fuel for it, and that's part of the reason we want to use solar power in the first place...to go green and to eliminate our electric bill.If you're on a tight budget, I would suggest that you just start off with a couple of panels. If you get plenty of sun light in your area, you can run quite a few devices in your home on just two solar panels.As you save a little money, you can add to your system by purchasing a few deep cycle batteries to store the electricity, and then an inverter that will convert the

direct current (DC) current that is available from the storage batteries, into the alternating current (AC) that is required for most of your household electrical devices.

After you get to a larger system with batteries, you'll also want to add a charge controller that regulates the current that charges the batteries after you have used electricity from them...like at night or overcast days.

When you're able to add more and more solar panels and batteries to the setup you have you'll eventually be able to totally eliminate your electric bill, or at least generate most of the electricity that you need for your entire household.

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