Solar System Guide
Friday, July 24th, 2009 Subscribe To Our Feed
In this article, I am going to go through what each piece of a solar power system does, and what role the component plays in the system. Every piece does a specific role, though you don’t have to include every piece in every solar project. A typical solar power system generates electricity, stores it in batteries for later use and then changes the Direct Current electricity from the batteries to the same type of AC electricity that comes out of the wall sockets in your house.
Solar Panels
The first part of a solar power system is the solar panels, which produce electricity using energy from the sun. The panel has a layer of silicon. When photons from sunlight hit the silicon, they knock loose electrons. These electrons are electricity and are directed through wires. Many solar cells, each of which generates about half a volt are put together to make a single solar panel. Any voltage can be generated by putting together the correct number of solar cells. Building a solar panel and generating your own free electricity is actually farily cheap and easy. To read more about how to build your own solar panel, take a look at Building a DIY Solar Panel
Charge Controller
The solar panels generate power and then send the electricity to a charge controller, which charges the batteries. The voltage going to the battery needs to be in a certain range – not too high and not too low – and the charge controller makes sure the voltage stays in this range. It also gradually lowers the power sent to the batteries as they get closer to fully charged to make sure the batteries don’t overcharge. Every once in a while after the batteries are fully charge, it will also “top off” the batteries to make sure they batteries stay fully charged. For more information about charge controllers, see Solar Charge Controllers
Batteries
The majority of solar power systems use 12 volt batteries like you find in your car. The most common type are sealed lead acid. This type of battery is easy to find, rugged and cheap. The only potential downside is weight, but it isn’t really much of a problem since you aren’t going to be moving the batteries around. You can often get surplus batteries from places like computer UPS systems for very cheap or even free.
Power Inverter
The batteries store and put out 12v Direct Current (DC), but the appliances in your house use 120v Alternating Current (AC). A power inverter converts the 12v DC power into 120v AC so you can use the electricity to power regular appliances. There are two types of power inverter: Modified Sine Wave (MSW) and True Sine Wave (TSW). Of the two, TSW is the better one because it perfectly matches the electricity that comes from the sockets in your house. TSW inverters cost more than MSW, but it is generally worth it in the long run to pay more for a TSW inverter.
Complete Solar Power System
Now we will put all the parts together into a complete system. You usually mount the solar panels on the roof. The solar panels are connected together with wires which then send the electricity to the charge controller. The power coming from the solar panels is then conditioned by the charge controller and used to charge the batteries. The batteries are charged all day while sunlight is hitting the solar panels. All day, while sunlight is hitting the solar panels, the batteries store the power generated by the panels. The power inverter takes the DC electricity from the betteries and converts it to the standard 120v AC electricity that all your applicances are used to getting from the wall sockets in your house. A system like this can be small enough to power only a single appliance, or big enough to supply power to your whole house.
If you are interested in how much it will cost for enough solar panels to power your house, see this guide to Solar Panel Cost
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