Renewable Energy

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SOLAR PANEL DIY WIRING CONFIGURATIONS SOLAR POWER DIY GET OFF THE GRID 2 PV PHOTOVOLTAIC 25.12.09

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

By: GREENPOWERSCIENCE

About the Author:

GREENPOWERSCIENCE is an expert in the feild of SOLAR PANEL DIY WIRING CONFIGURATIONS SOLAR POWER DIY GET OFF THE GRID 2 PV PHOTOVOLTAIC
For more information see: DIY solar panels

For more information visit Solar Energy

Popularity: 7% [?]

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Solar Energy in Pasadena 06.11.09

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

By: EcoToolsLLC

About the Author:

EcoToolsLLC is an expert in the feild of Solar Energy in Pasadena
For more information see: Renewable energy

For more information visit DIY Solar and Wind Power Generators

Popularity: 3% [?]

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Solar Panels- Are They Right For You? 30.10.09

Solar panels are devices that convert light into electricity. Solar panels are dropping in price, but they still are not cheap, so if you’re switching to solar it’s a great time to also carefully evaluate your electricity use. Call your utility company and get an “energy audit” and follow the recommendations. Most homeowners can cut their use of electricity or gas by anywhere from 5% to 30%. By cutting your power usage to an absolute minimum you can purchase only the expensive solar panel capacity that is required for your home. PV (photovoltaic) solar panels are made from solar cells which are a semiconductor material.

Electricity

The process for creating electricity from sun light is rather complex, but all you need to know is that photons collide with electrons in the semiconductor material and essentially free them up to flow when hooked up to a battery. This flow of electrons is what makes an electrical current.

The average household uses 30kwh of electricity per day. Electrical utility companies are required by law to accommodate “net metering”. This means that you can sell your excess power back to the power company. Thus, if you are out at work on a sunny day, or go on a two-week skiing vacation and aren’t using any electricity, the power being created by the solar panels is going back into the grid to the utility company. In other words every kilowatt-hour of electricity produced by a solar energy system ends up being used to the advantage of the homeowner, either as power to run appliances when the homeowner is there or as a dollar-for-dollar credit provided by the utility company for power that is not being used.

Cost

The most important component of the PV solar panel system will probably be the amount of subsidy you are eligible for. Since some utility companies need to meet goals for the amount of renewable energy they furnish, there are some very attractive rebates offered at times. These can be large rebates indeed, up to 50% of the cost of a system or even higher. This can make a system that would support the average 30 kwh per day home cost roughly $20,000 rather than $40,000! In addition, there is a $2,000 tax credit offered by the federal government. However, this is not always the case. In our local area of Colorado there are several utility companies that service the region. One offers a 50% rebate as described above. Another offers a 66% rebate, and a third offers no rebate at all. So you need to check with your utility company to see what rebates, if any, apply to your location. You should also contact a solar panel contractor who can give you lots of information about system costs, and of course they will probably know the rebates offered in your local area. Typical PV solar panels cost about $4 per watt before installation. Installation is a major expense, however, and in the example cited above with a 50% rebate, final system costs will amount to about $6.50- $7.00 per watt installed.

Batteries

Batteries are required in stand-alone systems to provide energy during night hours. These can be very expensive, but if you have an isolated cabin, an RV, or some other need for power and don’t have access to the public power grid, a solar system with batteries is certainly a solution.

Conclusion

When you consider the costs of a full blown PV solar system which will cut your electric bill down to zero or close to it, you get one other benefit. The value of your property increases with such a system, and your property taxes will not increase because of this added value. In addition to the satisfaction of cutting down your carbon footprint significantly, your system will eventually pay for itself, and your property will be worth more as well. Keep these factors in mind when you calculate your pay-back period.

By: Walter Ballenberger

About the Author:

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

Popularity: 22% [?]

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Make DIY Solar Panels – How to Build Solar Panels Easily 29.10.09

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

By: Pat kaa

About the Author:

Pat kaa is an expert in the feild of Make DIY Solar Panels – How to Build Solar Panels Easily
For more information see: Renewable energy

For more information visit Renewable energy

Popularity: 24% [?]

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Solar Modules-To Convert Light From The Sun Into Electricity 28.10.09

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.

By: Mark C. Robinson

About the Author:

Mark C. Robinson is an expert in the feild of Solar Modules-To Convert Light From The Sun Into Electricity
For more information see: Renewable energy

For more information visit Solar Energy

Popularity: 35% [?]

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How big of a discount can the state send you on a solar panel in Tennessee? 28.10.09




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

Popularity: 20% [?]

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