WATCH IN HIGH QUALITY FOR DIAGRAMS This is a simple explanation of “Series” and “Parallel” configurations for solar panels and DC batteries.

Learn more about solar panels for home use and how they benefit you!

Walter Ballenberger is an expert in the feild of Solar Panels- Are They Right For You?
For more information see: DIY Solar and Wind Power Generators

For more information visit Solar Energy

As the cost of living continues to rise there is a increasing demand for alternative energy resources that can provide cleaner and more cost efficient results to consumers. You just have to look at gas and oil prices to realise that there is indeed a crisis amongst us.

But the problem doesn’t not stop there!

Even the price of electricity is becoming unaffordable and thousands have resorted to turning off their power at certain times – but there is hope! Thanks to recent developments to solar energy research we now have a viable alternative to hydro electricity and provides savings of up to 80% on your Power Bill and contains no carbon emissions making it environmentally friendly.

Buying a Solar Power generator system can be very expensive depending on the size of your home and if you are seriously considering purchasing one expect to pay around $3000 upwards for a unit OR you can learn how to build solar panels and build one from scratch using materials that will cost you no more than $200.

The latter option is much cheaper and not really that hard to do if you have a good guide that can show you step by step how to construct a DIY Solar Panel.

The materials you need can be found in your home and at the local hardware store:

Solar cells that can be bought cheap

Plywood

Copper wire

Sheets of glass

All the materials displayed above can be used to build a DIY solar panel that can output as much as a commercial system on the market. As mentioned before as long as you have a detailed easy to follow guide you’ll have one made in no time.

For more information please visit my website – How to Build Solar Panels

Photovoltaic (PV) solar panels use solar cells to convert light from the sun directly into electricity. At Innovative Solar Solutions, we carry and stock most of the major brands, including Sharp Solar, Kyocera Solar, BP Solar, Evergreen Solar, SolarWorld, Kaneka, Uni-Solar, Suntech , Sanyo, Day4 and OEM Solar modules.

The three most common types of solar panels are Monocrystalline, Polycrystalline, and Amorphous:

Monocrystalline – made from a single large crystal, cut from ingots. Most efficient, but also the most expensive. Somewhat better in low light conditions.

Polycrystalline – cast blocks of silicon which may contain many small crystals, the most common type right now. Slightly less efficient than single crystal, but once set into a frame with 35 or so other cells, the actual difference in watts per square foot is not much.

Amorphous (also called thin film) – the silicon is spread directly on large plates or flexible laminates.They are cheaper to produce, but often much less efficient, which means larger panels for the same power. Uni-Solar is one example.

The differences between the two module types – crystalline and amorphous- really show up in their sunlight-to-electricity conversion efficiencies and power densities. Crystalline modules require less space than thin-film modules for the same amount of power—thin-film is less efficient in the conversion of sunlight to electricity.

Single- and multicrystalline modules have typical conversion efficiencies between 12% and 17%. But thin-film technologies can have half that, ranging from 6% to 8%. Thinfilm modules take up about twice as much space to generate an equivalent amount of energy compared to crystalline

modules.

Besides power density, there are two key differences in performance between crystalline and thin-film technologies. The first is impact of cell temperature on power production. The second is initial module power stabilization.

All PV modules experience a reduction in power with increasing cell temperature. For example, at 100°F, our sample crystalline module will produce approximately 6% less power than its STC rating. This effect is less pronounced for thin-film PV technologies—our example a-Si thin-film module would produce only 2% less power. While you can reduce cell temperature by allowing adequate air flow around any module, PV cells sitting out in the sun will still get hot—so thin-film a-Si modules might be a good choice for warm climates, especially if there’s plenty of room for the larger array.

Amorphous silicon modules take 6 to 12 months to reach their stable, rated output, whereas crystalline modules stabilize right away. So a-Si modules will show 20% to 25% higher-than-rated production at first. While that sounds like a bonus, this initial additional output must be considered in system design (for selecting wire sizes, charge controllers, and inverters). For example, if the final design indicates a 15 A circuit, the initial extra output might require accommodating 20 A. After this stabilization, thin-film modules degrade at similar rates to crystalline, about 0.5% to 1.0% per year.

I have been eyeing this solar panel:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=160219725943&ssPageName=ADME:B:WNARL:US:1123

and was wondering just how much money I might get back from the government in the form of rebates since it’s UL listed. If it’s just $5, that’s not too exciting. Thanks for reading.

solar panel government rebate