Home Solar Power Systems

This article will paint a thirty thousand foot view of this plan and then discuss how we can implement it. Then I’ll let you in on further resources that will help you with solar energy calculations, construction and installation.

Building a home solar power system involves a few major steps:

(1) Determining the household energy requirement. This influences the number of solar cells needed to produce the required electrical energy.

Most households will not want to take their homes completely off-grid. After calculations, the majority of families seem to prefer their solar panels to bear roughly 75% of their total energy consumption.

Why do they not want their house to be totally off-grid and be 100% powered by green, renewable energy? Because there will be periods when the light intensity is insufficient. It’s during these times when we’ll need to tap into the grid again.

(2) Constructing the solar panel. The photovoltaic cells are responsible for converting solar energy into electrical energy. It is also a major cost driver. Therefore the solar panel is the most important piece of the puzzle.

If you’re on a budget, you’re able to construct a solar panel by joining broken solar cells together. If you have money to burn, buying ready-made, commercial solar panels can also be an option. These come with long warranty periods (like 25 years and beyond) and are framed in high quality aluminum.

(3) The inverter. This component converts direct current (DC) generated by the solar panels into alternating current (AC) that’s usable by your household appliances. After that, this is channeled to the power distribution box via a synchronizer so that electricity from the grid and electricity from the solar panels can be combined before each appliance in your home uses them.

(4) Installation. Obviously, we need to choose a location where there is as little shade as possible throughout the day. This is usually the roof. With proper guidance from more experienced hobbyists or a guidebook, you can fix the solar panels to your roof (or anywhere else) exactly like the professionals do.

To put all these together, you’ll need a proven plan that tells you exactly what to do — from the broad structure down to the last bolt and nut.

Continue Reading:

1. How To Build A Personal DIY Solar Power System With Less Than $99
2. Do-It-Yourself Solar Panels – Electricity Conversion From Sunlight
3. Homemade Solar Panels

Make Your Home & Office Clean & Green Using Solar Energy

There are many different ways of using solar energy. You can use it for heating, cooling and for generating electricity.

Each approach has different costs and complexity.

Here are 7 ideas how you can make use of clean, green solar power:

1. Generate electricity.

This is the first thing on everyone’s mind when we talk about solar panel. After all, we are all hoping to rely less on fossil fuel in the future. Using electricity generated from solar panels, you can power your household appliances and workstations in the office.

You can also store the solar generated electricity in rechargeable batteries to power up garden lights, floodlights, gate openers, garage lights, et cetera.

2. Passive space heating.

Instead of using electricity to heat up your house, the sun can do the work. You can trap heat in your home and office by using blinds, sunrooms and awnings. As simple as this sounds, it works very well to lower your electricity consumption.

3. Heat up air and water.

Your water supply can be heated up using solar collectors. Solar water heater do not require many moving parts other than the water pump itself.

Depending on your solar heater design and sunlight intensity, water temperature can be increased by as much as 10 to 15 degree Celsius. You can also increase your indoor temperature by letting a stream of air pass through solar heated water. This can be done using a simple heat exchanger.

4. Warm up food.

Do you pack lunch to work? If you do, there is no need to wait for your turn to use the microwave oven anymore. You can simply use solar energy to heat up your food at your own convenience.

5. Heat up your swimming pool

You can circulate swimming pool water through a solar collector. This helps you get lots of heat into your pool so you can enjoy a rejuvenating dip after you come back from work.

Another way to heat up your pool is to cover it with a solar blanket, which also prevents heat loss through evaporation.

6. Enhance your landscaping

You can use super-bright LED lamps as landscape lighting. This can save you the trouble of hiding cables under the soil. You may be surprised at how well these LED lamps bring out the color of your plants at night.

7. Water your plants

Solar panels can provide electricity to sprinklers that water your plants. You can build a self-sustaining garden by collecting rainwater underground and using them to water the plants at regular intervals during the day.

How else can you use solar energy in your daily life? Hopefully these ideas above can help you find your own ways of using solar power in creative ways.

Continue Reading:

1. Home Solar Power — Different Ways of Harnessing Energy From The Sun To Reduce Energy Bills
2. Survey Your Household Energy Usage Before Installing Solar Panels
3. Creating An Energy Efficient House – A Primer On Why You Should Do It and How

Solar panel inverters convert direct current (DC) into alternating current (AC). This is one of the most important components that you need for your solar power generator.

You can find three types of solar panel inverters:

1. Stand-Alone Solar Panel Inverters
2. Synchronous Solar Panel Inverters
3. Multi-function Solar Panel Inverters

1. Stand-Alone Solar Panel Inverters

Stand Alone solar panel inverters has a range from as little as 100 watts to as much as 8,000 watts. Low wattage inverters can be used to power individual or small groups of appliances. At the high end of the scale, solar inverters can help power an entire home. In order to know what inverter specification you should use, you will need to first determine the total energy consumed by your household.

This information is easily available from your monthly energy bills. To arrive at the specification you need, please take into account the power loss through various photovoltaic components. Even if there’s no loss (which is impossible), it’s good to have some buffer.

When using inverters to power household appliances, it’s important to choose models that have a built-in ability to surge. Common appliances like dryers and clothes washers and other motorized equipment require a surge when you start then up. Thus your inverter has to supply this need.

Click Here To Read About Synchronous Solar Panel Inverters

Continue Reading:

1. Sizing Your Solar Energy Panels – Part 2
2. Sizing Your Solar Energy Panels – Part 3
3. Solor Panel Inverters – Synchronous Solar Panel Inverters

Audit Your Household Energy Usage

An important step to take before you install solar panels is to do a thorough survey on how you use energy at home.

It is much cheaper to buy energy-saving devices and electronic timers to conserve energy than it is to build a bigger solar energy system.

Energy-saving lamps or LED lamps only cost you over a hundred dollars, at most. An additional solar panel can easily cost you hundreds of dollars.

Many people are not conscious of how they use energy at home. Thus they do not know how much electricity they are wasting on a daily basis. A simple energy audit can help you uncover areas where you can cut back on wastage.

First, you have to collect some data about your current electricity consumption. All you need to do is gather a stack of power bills from the past one or two years. Then average out your energy usage on a daily basis. (This will take inconsistencies and seasonal changes into consideration.)

Simply add up your monthly figures and divide it by 365. This will help you estimate your consumption in kWh per day. The average American uses about 20 kWh per day. How much do you use?

If you can get some data on the energy you use over a 24-hour period, it will be interesting. However such details are not always necessary.

The next thing you have to do is find out where you can save electricity. The average household use electricity in this proportion:

- Heating / cooling: 44%
- Lighting, household appliances & cooking: 38%
- Water heating: 18%

A huge part of your expenditure probably goes into heating or cooling as well. It makes sense to look at how we can save energy on heating before moving on to other areas.

You may find these suggestions useful for energy conservation at home:

1. Turn off heaters, air-conditioners and electrical appliances when they’re not in use

2. Use energy saving appliances. Some examples are energy-saving bulbs and LED lamps. Energy saving appliances are easily identified. With the Appliance Labeling Rule enforced, manufacturers are now required to attach labels on major home appliances to provide an estimate of their product’s energy consumption and efficiency.

3. Use power-controlling devices. These basically control the power delivered to motors (or other inductive loads) by matching the 60-Hz sine wave to the changing demands of the motor. Essentially, power supply that was once out-of-phase with the load is now aligned (in-phase).

You can use this formula to find out each home appliance’s power consumption:

(Wattage × Hours Used Per Day ÷ 1000 = Daily Kilowatt-hour (kWh) consumption

Let’s take your refrigerator as an example:

Suppose your fridge is rated at 725W, its monthly consumption is estimated to be:

725 Watts × 24 hours ÷ 1000 × 30 days = 522 kWh per month

(Note: This is just an example. A refrigerator, although turned on all the time, cycles on and off to maintain storage temperature. Thus it does not operate at maximum wattage all the time.)

Here are some power ratings (in Watts) of different types of household appliances, according to the U.S. Department of Energy:

· Aquarium = 50–1210
· Clock radio = 10
· Coffee maker = 900–1200
· Clothes washer = 350–500
· Clothes dryer = 1800–5000
· Dishwasher = 1200–2400 (using the drying feature greatly increases energy consumption)
· Dehumidifier = 785
· Electric blanket- Single/Double = 60 / 100
· Fans
Ceiling = 65–175
Window = 55–250
Furnace = 750
Whole house = 240–750
· Hair dryer = 1200–1875
· Heater (portable) = 750–1500
· Clothes iron = 1000–1800
· Microwave oven = 750–1100
· Personal computer
CPU – awake / asleep = 120 / 30 or less
Monitor – awake / asleep = 150 / 30 or less
Laptop = 50
· Radio (stereo) = 70–400
· Refrigerator (frost-free, 16 cubic feet) = 725
· Televisions (color)
19″ = 65–110
27″ = 113
36″ = 133
53″-61″ Projection = 170
Flat screen = 120
· Toaster = 800–1400
· Toaster oven = 1225
· VCR/DVD = 17–21 / 20–25
· Vacuum cleaner = 1000–1440
· Water heater (40 gallon) = 4500–5500
· Water pump (deep well) = 250–1100
· Water bed (with heater, no cover) = 120–380

After you have figured out where to save energy on, you’ll probably want to make use of solar heaters to reduce your utility bills. Solar heaters are much cheaper than PV panels and are more efficient.

With lower electricity consumption, you’ll only require a smaller solar system. Thus the upfront cost reduces.

If you are installing a grid-tied system, you need to take into consideration your rate structure.

Some utility companies charge you for electricity based on a flat rate. No matter how much you use, the rate remains. Others charge you according to a tiered structure. This means that rate goes up if you use beyond a certain limit. There may also be a time-of-use (TOU) rate, which means you have to pay more if you use electricity during the peak period.

If you have surveyed your household energy usage and also implemented energy saving measures, you probably will never need to pay the higher-tier rates set by your utility company.

Continue Reading:

1. About
2. Sizing Your Solar Energy Panels – Part 3
3. 7 Different Ways of Using Solar Energy At Home and In Your Office

The Energy Star Label

There are many reasons why you must have a home that is energy efficient. Its long-term effect is simply amazing.

Best of all, you don’t have to sacrifice your current lifestyle and comfort at home to have this.

Here are some guidelines that can help. When practiced, you will inevitably lower your monthly energy bills and make your home more environmentally friendly:

1. Be Smart On Lighting

Many homes have a number of lights that are left on at the same time. For some, lights are kept on till the morning.

People reason that lighting is important to create ambience and prevent theft. This is true. And if you are of this persuasion, your best alternative will be to use energy-saving bulbs and super-bright LEDS.

You can also consider using motion detectors or timers to limit the operating time of your lights.

For outdoor and garden lights, you can use solar-powered lamps instead of incandescent bulbs, which drains energy. Since they’re located outdoor, they’ll run very well with ample sunlight throughout the day.

2. Get Energy Efficient Appliances

Household appliances, together with your heater, consume most of the electricity you use. The Department of Energy and the Environmental Protection Agency has implemented a system for consumers to identify energy efficient appliances.

Common electrical items are labeled with an Energy Star sticker to inform you about the estimated energy consumption for that particular model.

The next time you go shopping, read these labels before you buy your next appliance.

3. Use Your Refrigerator Wisely

Refrigerators are kept on all the time. It does not take a lot of energy to maintain its interior temperature. But when you open its door to take anything, cold air escapes and your fridge has to draw power to keep its temperature.

Therefore use the ice dispenser, if you have one. The door remains closed while ice cubes are dispensed. And do not keep the fridge door open for too long. If you can, increase the temperature of your freezer and cooler sections. Often, we turn the knob to the coldest setting. This is quite unnecessary.

If you clean your refrigerator’s cooling coils twice a year (by vacuuming it), your compressor maintains its efficiency. Otherwise if dirt builds up around it, you refrigerator has to run all the time just to maintain its temperature.

4. Cut off phantom loads

For most of us, even after we turn off everything in our house, the power meter still spins. This is because many electronic items still eats up power when they are shut off or put on standby.

A good solution for this is to use a power strip. Once you turn the power off, all the connected electronics get turned off. No more power is drawn.

5. Clean smart

Use upright vacuum cleaners instead of central vacuums. Instead of a dryer, use a clothesline (if possible). If you have to use a dryer, make sure the lint filter is cleaned before every wash.

View Part 2 of this series here

Continue Reading:

1. Home Solar Power — Different Ways of Harnessing Energy From The Sun To Reduce Energy Bills
2. 7 Different Ways of Using Solar Energy At Home and In Your Office
3. Survey Your Household Energy Usage Before Installing Solar Panels

In many people’s mind, homemade solar panels are often perceived as cheap, fragile or makeshift. This is understandable. Without big brand names behind our handicraft, do-it-yourself solar panels are often misunderstood as temporary setups that may break before the week is over.

What people fail to notice is that photovoltaic cells found inside our solar panels are actually reliable units of solar generators manufactured by corporations that adopt world-class production processes.

The DIY hobbyist simply puts different components together so they form a system that generates enough electrical power to run electrical appliances. The reliability of the system lies largely on the photovoltaic cells.

Although it requires a little knowledge on how to use simple tools and constructing simple electrical circuits, building a homemade solar panel is really one of the simplest DIY projects around.

To build a DIY solar panel, the hobbyist builds a shallow, wooden box that provides structural support to house all the necessary components. He then place the solar cells onto a substrate made of masonite or acrylic before attaching it to the base of the shallow box. After that, he prepares a piece of glass or plexiglass to cover up the box. This provides protection from outdoor elements that can harm the components. If necessary, an inverter is used to convert direct current into alternating current so household appliances can use the electricity.

Those of us who aspire to build a simple homemade solar panel can do so within a weekend even if we have no prior experience making one. This is provided we have basic DIY skills to fabricate simple parts as described above to house the components in.

There are, however, a few pitfalls that can cause our homemade solar panel project to come to a screeching halt. Therefore it is useful to get advice and supervision from other hobbyists who are more experienced. Alternatively, you can also get a reliable guide to show you the steps and pitfalls to building homemade solar panels.

Continue Reading:

1. About
2. Insider Solar Power Generator Review: 3 Most Common Mistakes Hobbyists Make on Their First DIY Solar Panel Project
3. Build Amazing Home Solar Power Systems Used by Families Who Don’t Want to Pay For Their Utilities

Are you ready for what Multifunction Solar Panel Inverters can do for you? Let’s jump right in…

Multifunction solar panel inverters combine the best from Stand-Alone Solar Panel Inverters and Synchronous Solar Panel Inverters. They are of course more expensive, but these are the best choice for your solar energy panels.

This type of inverter allows you to generate excess power to be stored in a battery bank. As such, you are able to use energy from the grid, from the solar panels or from stored energy in the batteries. You can even connect a standby generator to the whole setup. Let me illustrate…

During the day, solar energy panels supply your household appliances with power. At the same time, the battery bank is charged up to store energy for the night. If there is surplus electricity, they can be sold to your local power company.

By evening, the batteries will be charged up. At this time, the inverter provides AC power to the house from the batteries. If the batteries are flat, the inverter taps into the grid to charge the batteries and power up the house at the same time.

If a standby generator is used, the inverter will synchronize its power so it can be added to an existing source of power. Many multifunction solar panel inverters are not as efficient as synchronous inverters because the system must have a battery. However, they offer functions that grid-tied inverters do not.

Continue Reading:

1. About
2. Sizing Your Solar Energy Panels – Part 2
3. Sizing Your Solar Energy Panels – Part 3