Installing Solar Panels: What Parts Do I Need
With growing worries with regards to hazardous pollution, climbing electrical power fees, and dwindling supplies of fossil fuels, the desire to use solar powered energy is growing swiftly. Very few, however, truly know what a complete solar power system is, as most available information and facts concentrates on commercial or DO-IT-YOURSELF solar panels, failing to cover the rest of what is required to build a truly useful system. This article is going to make clear the 4 components of a complete solar powered energy system, so, should you decide to convert to solar energy, you’ll fully understand what exactly you are getting into.
Residential solar panels
An individual solar panel has three main components, a housing unit, solar cells, and a wiring system. Housing units are in most cases constructed with metal support frames, generally aluminum, some kind of backing, which can be produced from various materials, and a glass, or Plexiglas, front cover. The housing unit needs to be ridged, sturdy and waterproof, as moisture or warping can cause damage. Mounted on the backing are a number of solar cells. Frequently, solar panels will have thirty-six cells, but this can vary based on the voltage of the cells and the desired output of each panel. These solar cells are normally created from silicon. When the sun hits this material electrons are released, resulting in an electrical current. This current is then sent through, and, ultimately, out of the panel by the wiring system. The electrical wiring system on the solar panel itself is made of what is known as tabbing wire. This is a long flat wire that gets soldered to the rear of each cell in the solar panel, connecting them and making it possible for current to pass through from one cell to another. Also part of the solar panel wiring system is what’s termed a blocking diode. This is the little yet significant device that prevents current from reversing and traveling back into the solar panel.
Storage Devices
Residential solar panels do not create enough electricity in real-time to power people’s gadgets, nor do they produce any electrical energy whatsoever once the sun goes down. In order to overcome this issue, we need to incorporate the use of a power storage system, namely batteries. The key bit of information regarding batteries is that they’re 12 volts, a fact that determines the required voltage production of most solar panels. Another important bit of information about batteries in solar power systems is that they have to be what are called deep cycle batteries. Deep cycle batteries are manufactured to be charged up and then fully depleted, time and time again. If you did this, for example, with ordinary automobile batteries, you would ruin them quite swiftly. Finally, as one battery just isn’t sufficient for the demands of most systems, one must wire a host of batteries together. This group of connected batteries is called a battery bank.
Charge Controllers
A fully functioning array of solar panels will produce great amounts of power the entire day. Oftentimes, though, our batteries are fully charged, and if fully charged batteries are fed a steady current of electricity, they will become damaged. It is necessary, therefore, to install a device that can determine the amount of charge in a battery bank and then make use of that information to manage the quantity of power sent to them. The device that does this is called a charge controller.
Power Inverter
The final piece of a complete solar power system is what is called the power inverter. As stated previously, battery banks are 12-volt systems. Furthermore, they use what is called a direct current system, or, for short, a DC system. The products in one’s home, on the other hand, use 120-volt alternating current, or AC, systems. For that reason, we have to convert the 12-volt DC energy coming from our battery banks into 120-volt AC energy before we can make use of it to power our home appliances.
Putting It All Together
If you would like power your household with solar technology, keep in mind that you’ll need more than just the solar panels that crank out electrical energy. You’ll also have to have a battery bank to store your power, a charge controller to manage your power, and an inverter to convert your power into a form that you can actually use. A system that’s missing any of the abovementioned components is just not going to get the job done. Thank you for reading, and I wish you the very best with all your do-it-yourself ventures.
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