Do You Need Solar Panels?

Sun—the eternal source of all forms of energy— continues to feed The Earth with approximately 100-200 Watts energy per square meter at sea level, usable by direct heating or electricity conversion.

Each minute enough sunlight strikes the Earth’s surface to satisfy the world’s energy needs for an entire year!

Solar panels are used for harnessing the power of sun’s energy in a humanly-usable form. They are cost-effective in the long run, almost maintenance free, installable in any remote locations (even space), and rely on a renewable source for energy—hence being a clean and sustainable source of energy.

What are Solar Panels?

In plain terms, Solar panels are devices for capturing the energy in sunlight. The term solar panel stands for either hot water panels or photovoltaic panels. Former produces heat energy and later, electrical energy from solar energy.

Solar hot water panels, as they are called, have dark colored metal with water pipes attached to take away the absorbed heat. This heated water is used for numerous purposes in residential and office setups as domestic hot water, building heating, sanitary purposes, etc.

Solar photovoltaic (PV) panels are arrangements of PV cells made of semiconductor materials which convert solar energy to electricity. They are used for powering gadgets, charging batteries, running phones, parking meters, street lights, traffic signals, telemetry, information broadcasting, etc. Using a grid-tie system, excess power can be sold off to power grid!

Now when the energy from conventional fuels doesn’t seem to be a promise for further than half a century, large financial incentives are being provided by government for solar PV plants installation for power generation for residential use and for public utility services. The initial installation and setup costs are relatively high, thereby requiring government incentives.

Because of slightly higher financial inputs, the cost comes at 15 to 30 cents per kWh of electricity from solar power whereas fossil fuel powered generators can run at 4 to 11 cents per kWh.

But now State and Federal tax credits are waived off and rebates are also being provided for solar panel installations in residential places. In many northern European countries, combined systems (hot water and space heating) are used to provide 15 to 25% of home heating needs.

Making of a Solar Panel

Silicon being costly and fabrication technology being very delicate, the initial financial investments in solar panel of PV type is relatively high. Extremely thin silicon layers are assembled, then carefully polished and treated to repair. After this, some more processing (addition of dopants) is done and the metal contacts are made to put solar cells in series. Solar panels usually have a polymer encapsulation on the back.

For enthusiasts, here is a very nice how-to on building your own solar water heating panel!

Working Off a Solar Panel

Solar panels of water heating type use fluids like water for collecting and transferring solar energy on the simple principle of heat transfer implying that the heated metal surface gives off energy to colder water coming in contact (water needs to be pumped for this circulation) and the water carries away the energy to be used elsewhere.

Solar panels using PV cells made of semiconductor materials convert light photons to electrons, which then travel through some external circuit to oppositely charged electrode thereby giving current in the external circuit!

Advances in solar panel production technology and governments ecncouragement to promising energy sources has brought a lot of energy at our doorsteps at not much costs in the long runs and this solution is capable enough of meeting all our energy needs without depleting the environment.

 

RESOURCES

Some online stores for solar panels are listed below (in no order of priority and none have been evaluated by the publishers of this website—do your own due-diligence):

• Affordable Solar

• Electronics section of Amazon.com

• Mr. Solar

• Direct Industry- A Virtual Industrial Exhibition

• Solar Storage Front

• The El Paso Solar Energy Association

• Sharp Solar Systems [topmost manufacturer of solar cells worldwide with nearly as much generating capacity as the next three largest manufacturers combined].

• Silicon Solar Inc.

• Cheapest Solar Panels - A price survey of solar panels.

 

FURTHER READING for the more curious:

definitive how-to for installing and maintaining high-performance and low-maintenance solar hot water systems.

 A nice photo gallery showing residential implementations of solar panels.

 

APS Project Sol

A calculator to find requirements of solar panel!