The Advantages And Disadvantages Of Solar Power Systems In The Home

In our quest to become a completely green nation, one of the major considerations is finding ways to create enough energy to supply our needs. Over the years we as a nation have made and saved power by harnessing wind, water and solar power.

There are many advantages and disadvantages of solar power use, and it has been estimated by the United States Department of Energy that if we covered one-hundred square miles of desert with solar panels, the electricity gathered would be enough to power the entire nation with its daily requirement! The problem is in how we would harness and then distribute all this energy - so this where residential solar panels step in.

Advantages

The advantages received with a residential solar panel installation are significant. For one thing, solar panels can be used for quite a long time - many manufacturers estimate a good twenty years of continual usage before the need will arise for replacement. This means that once installed, there is very little maintenance involved, beyond possible battery replacement for models that use them.

Also, unlike the installation and use of diesel or gas power generators, solar panels are completely quiet while supplying electricity to the home. In fact, many users of solar energy report forgetting the panels are even there, working on producing energy for their home.

Of course, over time the solar panel system will save the owner extra money because you no longer have to spend so much on high electrical bills. This is one of the biggest benefits for those who own a home solar system.

On the Flip Side of Solar Power

Unfortunately, there are also some disadvantages to the installation and use of residential solar power systems. The big one for many is the initial price, which typically is about $32,000 for the proper installation to the home. And once installed, the system is there for good - if you decide to move, the system cannot come with you - it becomes a permanent fixture of the home. Also, if the need ever arises for the replacement or repair of roof tiles, the panels will need to be taken down, the repairs to the roof made, and then the panels reinstalled by a qualified electrician.

Large Appliances

Another downside to solar panels is how they will not produce enough energy for devices that require a lot of electricity to run, such as the home's hot water heater and electric range. This in turn means still needing to pay the electric company for some service, although much less than before.

The final disadvantage of solar panels is how several types cannot stand up to hail or extreme weather too well - due to this, it is recommended to find an insurance policy that will cover any damages by fire and weather to your solar system.

As you can see, there are both advantages and disadvantages of solar power in residential usage. However, if you take precautions and keep yourself informed, home solar panel systems can be a great investment for you and your family.

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Homemade Solar Panels For Your Home - Produce Your Own Free Electricity At Home

Is it possible to generate your own electricity at home with homemade solar panels?

A large number of nations around the world have started lowering their dependencies on unsafe sources of energies (conventional sources) through the process of selecting various other cleaner, Eco-friendly and sustainable energy sources. Top of the list of these alternative energy sources is solar power, generated and converted by means of a solar panels and wind generated power.

Solar power is an electrical energy produced from the sun through homemade solar panels, that could be utilized to deliver electricity into your residence, heat the water and even operate several other electrically powered accessories. Essentially the number of choices are unending with just a tiny bit of creative and imagination. However, do you know you can solve your more expensive power bills by just transitioning to solar technology by making use of homemade solar panels or wind energy generated electricity? This tends to solve your addiction to standard fuels and will help protect our environment, minimizing the level of carbon (greenhouse gas) that is released during production with the conventional method.

Not surprisingly there are lots of disbelief among individuals, that setting up solar technology is expensive and requires to always be professionally done. The fact is that they're very much more affordable options available where you can make your own homemade solar panels to produce a source of electricity for a fraction to the price of manufactured panels. All you need to undertake is locate competitively priced (PV) solar cells and build the panels yourself. A single homemade solar panels will include many solar cells interconnected collectively. The PV cells use a semiconductor elements, for instance silicon, to permit the sunlight for being converted into an electrical source. Typically the mounting of the Photovoltaic cells straight to the panels does not require high level of DIY expertise and may be undertaken only using a few number of tools.

How could you yield electricity using homemade solar panels?

Actually, Photovoltaic is a technique of transforming the sun's rays into electrical energy. The Photovoltaic solar cells generate household power (DC) energy source coming from sun energy, which often can consequently be used to power electronic devices as well as to charge a battery. A good inverter is necessary to change the DC to AC electricity. There are plenty of tutorials accessible that could show where to track down low-cost solar cell components that includes a step-by-step handbook on building a homemade solar panels. The panels may be put in on top or roof of the house as well as could even be ground mounted depending on your particular situations as well as the amount of electric power you want to generate.

Naturally the main element to the installation of an efficient homemade solar panels is to locate a highly recommended user guide which gives straightforward directions on where you should purchase the components from and how to construct the exact homemade solar panels (usually backed-up by video tutorial guidance). An average panel can be done for approximately $200 by means of materials acquired out of your localized home improvement center.

Solar energy system is among the most cleanest and most realistic types of alternative energies and can be taken in a number of methods to power the energy requirements of your home or back garden. The technological innovations is actually becoming even better all of the time and homemade solar panels grown to be more compact and a lot more successful.

Creating your own electrical power from the sun will help dependencies from conventional sources of energy and decreases carbon footprint making the environment cleaner and free from pollution.

In a situation where you are generating more power than you need, you could offer this extra electricity for sale to your electrical power supplier, a good source of additional income.

Building your own homemade solar panels can greatly benefit both people and mother nature. Solar power for homes really a clean and renewable energy that we should take advantage. Imagine if majority of the households all over the world are using this clean and sustainable source of electricity, how much percentage we can reduce the dependencies of fossil fuels. Visit http://www.BuildYourOwnSolarPanels.org for details on how you can get started leveraging this free, renewable and abundant energy from the sun.

How Much Energy Will These Solar Panels Produce Anyway?

The whole idea of this feed-in-tariff business is that you earn money by selling units of energy produced by your solar panels. So much so that after 25 years of operation you've made your money back and have even turned a tidy profit. This means that in order to know whether putting up some solar panels makes any sense, you need to know exactly how much energy they're going to produce over the 25-year guarantee period.

Easy, you might say - the calculation is pretty straightforward. You find out the average annual irradiation (sunnyness level) from your local weather station, and multiply by the efficiency of your solar panels and the number of square metres you have. This will give you a nice number and away we go. The only problem is you might be more than 50% wrong because we've missed out a couple of variables. Variables such as temperature coefficient, tilt angle, diffuse-light fraction, solar cell type, shading losses, inverter losses, cable losses, degradation, module de-rate factor, mismatch losses, anti-reflective coatings, snow and lightning strikes, to name a few.

Of course there are an infinite number of effects that can influence the output of your photovoltaic system (solar eclipse, anyone?). The question is whether you have considered the important ones or not.

Knowledgeable installers use one of a number computer programs designed specifically to take these factors into account. You type in what type of solar panel you're using, how many, where they are, what angle they're tilted at, what direction they're facing and then press 'go'. It then calculates the amount of energy you'll produce each month and even the return on investment if you want it to. Behind these models is actually some physics that describes the behaviour of solar cells under different light intensities and correctly.

The most commonly used model in Europe is called PVSyst, developed at the University of Geneva. This software package contains information on a large number of different solar panel types and is capable of taking into account many of the above listed factors. Installers across Europe use this software package to predict the energy yield of residential solar systems, as do many banks pondering whether to provide multi-million euro loans to super-large PV power projects. Even with this advanced software package however, some of these factors are very complex, and improving these models is an active area of research.

Here, I'll deal with a couple of these complications as examples. When you buy a solar panel, it invariably comes with a power rating. Full size modules are generally around 200W. What does this mean though? In principle, the power rating indicates what you get when the panel is illuminated by full-sunlight. 'Full sunlight' is not very specific, so the international community has defined what is known as Standard Test Conditions (STC), which corresponds to an irradiation of 1000 W/m2 and a cell temperature of 25oC, when the light has a specific spectrum (or colour) known as Air Mass Index 1.5. So the power of your solar panel comes from its performance under exactly these conditions. In general this is measured using special type of lamp called a 'solar simulator' that tries to reproduce the AM1.5 spectrum as closely as possible. Calibrating these lamps precisely is notoriously difficult and there are very few testing centers around the world that are truly trusted. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Colorado, USA uses at least two different lamps and one outdoor measurement to record STC performance, after a long period of calibration.

Because measuring the STC performance is so tricky, the power rating you get has a plus or minus 5 percent error margin. This is hard to include in your simulation. In addition, manufacturers will often deliberately under-rate the power of their solar panels to be sure they don't fall below the warranty. This means you may well get considerably more power than you expect.

Another factor that adds to uncertainty is the degradation factor. When you buy solar panels they are normally guaranteed for 20 years, but only to 80% of the initial power output. This means the manufacturer expects them to degrade 1% per year on average. When calculating performance in the models, people also tend to use a 1% degradation rate per year. This is only a rough estimate however. During the certification process, solar panels are given all sports of nasty treatment to test their reliability to breaking point. This doesn't tell you much about the rate of degradation when the solar panels are outside under normal operation though. The only reliable way to test degradation over 20 years is to wait 20 years, but this is complicated by the fact that technology improves reliability much faster than that. So the degradation of solar panels made in 2008 has only been tested since, well, 2008.

What these issues highlight is that understanding the energy yield output of your solar panels is not as straightforward as it may at first seem. When having your system designed, make sure who-ever you're dealing with has some experience, and if possible, get a second opinion.

The other critical piece of information for understanding the financial viability of a solar installation is how much you will get paid per kWh under the feed-in-tariff. Unfortunately, the UK government has not released the final figures yet, which means no-one in the UK can make a reliable financial plan for getting solar panels, even when the launch date for the feed-in-tariff is just 4 months away.

Hopefully I will be able to update you on this in the near future. For now though, it's better to be more conservative with your numbers than too ambitious....

Kevin Langley is a leading knowledge in the Solar Investment and Renewable Energy world. Having worked with the subject for many years, he is fast becoming an expert on green energy and investments in green stocks.

He writes for many blogs and runs a range of Solar websites. He has a keen interest in green renewable energy and spends most of this writing time focusing on this subject.

http://solarfeedintariff.co.uk/