Solar Panels - The technology inside this environmentally friendly power source and why its sensible
13 Oct 2007
Solar panels are made to change the infinite reservoir of energy of our sun to another type of productive energy. In general the energy that results will be in the form of heat (to heat water for example) or electricity that might be used to power anything from a small mp3 player to a complete home.In this article we are going to discuss the larger residential and industrial panels that are designed to make energy for the entire home or business, where such panels are regularly installed on the top of the home or close to the home if space allows. We are going to concentrate on the kind of panels that generate electricity known collectively as Photovoltaic panels.
Solar panels are a wonderful way to reduce electricity costs and to reduce your greenhouse footprint, and to become more self-sufficient. They are now becoming very popular in dense urban areas where alternative power advocates and law makers are creating incentives for this safe and quiet alternative energy source. The state of California, for example, has been offering large rebates on the up-front capital cost in acquiring and implementing a residential solar system.
After the panels are installed, power from the solar system is used to power the residence, or, when electricity is being generated that exceeds what is being used, re-routed back to the grid, where it is procured back by the power company. There may be times where you are actually making income from your panels. With rebates factored into the cost it will generally take from fifteen to 22 years to recoup the initial investment, at which time you will essentially be generating power from sunlight for free.One little-considered fact, however, is that solar panels are initially contributory to greenhouse emissions due to the fact that it takes an input of power to construct a solar panel, that this energy is very often carbon-based, and front-end loaded, and therefore there is a time horizon during which the panel has actually contributed to carbon emissions rather than detracted from them.
Until such time as the solar panel has generated energy that is equivalent to the energy used to manufacture it (its fossil-emission payback period) it is actually a contributor to carbon emissions. This fossil-emission payback period is normally considered to be 4 to eight years.Low power solar panels are generally available in 12 volt or 14 v configurations, whilst high power solar panels are available as 24 volt.
As solar panels are Direct Current, you would generally need a power inverter that uprates it from one-voltage Direct Current to another-voltage Alternating Current to make it the same as the power that enters the building and the power grid.Todays solar panels are constructed using pairs of sheets of silicon, doped with phosphorus and boron particles. High-tech Amorphous silicon solar panels are a powerful, emerging array of photovoltaics that differ in voltage, wattage, structure, and manufacture than traditional photovoltaics which use crystalline silicon.
The H-AS solar cells are constructed in a similar way, but they are merely one micrometer thick by laying down polymorphous silicon at intense pressures and temperatures. Solar panels are normally maintenance free and many manufacturing companies will supply a warranty of electrical output many times for as long as 20 years.Solar panels are invariably installed on whichever side of your house gets the most solar exposurein those locations south of the equator this is the north-facing side, and in places that are north of the equator its the south-facing side.
