Category Archives: Solar Panels for Homes

The Reasons for Why You Should Consider a PV-System

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Solar panels for home use have been increasingly getting more popular in the last decade. There are many reasons for this. In this article we give you the top reasons for why investing a solar panel system might be something you should look further into.

Many people are environmentally motivated when it comes to deciding to buy a solar panel. There is no doubt that our carbon emissions from polluting coal power and use of fossil fuels damages our planet.

Then there’s the security aspect of solar panels. There are several ways a PV system provides security. Let’s look closer at the most important ones:

  • You are protected from price increases in utility power. If you generate your own power, with equipment you’ve bought 20 years ago, chances are you are paying much less for the electricity that is generated, compared to the price that the utility takes for the same amount of power.
  • In case of a utility power failure you have your own battery bank of solar power, waiting to be spent during times where the rest of your neighborhood has to deal with no power.

There are also financial reasons for purchasing solar systems:

  • Depending on what situation you’re in, where you’re located and so on, you can actually end up saving money by using photovoltaics to cover your electricity consumption. What we’ve found is that if solar power is affordable or not is mainly a factor of whether or not your state/government has good solutions when it comes to incentives and rebates.
  • In many cases, the utility companies allow you to sell electricity back on the grid through something that’s called net-metering. This is just as a regular power meter, except it can also move backwards, adding to your “credit”.

There’s a specific category that we like to call solar panel enthusiasts. These are the people that often make their own PV solutions or modify pre-manufactured ones. They have great knowledge within power electronics and hopefully know what they’re doing!

Or maybe you haven’t really decided why you are reading this article. Maybe you’ve just started learning about solar panels. If you belong to this group, you should check out sites like http://energyinformative.org (linked to a pros and cons list of solar energy), which provide 100% free information about renewable energy for those just getting started.

Top 3 Reasons to Purchase Photovoltaics at Home

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Solar panels for home use have taken the market with storm. We do not expect to see a drop in this trend any time soon. In this article, I’m going to list the top 3 reasons for why you should buy a solar system for your home. The first reason on this list is a no-brainer:

1. Go Green

Solar energy is a massive improvement in terms of reduced climate gases when we compare it other ways to harness energy such as nuclear reactors, coal plants and fossil fuels.

The only way PV contributes negatively on your carbon footprint is during the manufacturing and installation of the various components. Other than this, you are generating your own clean and green electricity, without a single worry in the world. You can even become completely energy self-sufficient (if you have enough PV cells to match your own consumption of energy that is).

Note that wind energy is about the same as solar regarding this. If you are located somewhere where it’s windy, maybe you should look into residential wind turbines as well?

2. Become Secure

If you generate your own power, you are not as reliant on the electrical grid and its fluctuating prices any more. Most places in the world, the general trend is that the prices of electricity are increasing.

Maybe more importantly, you are no longer reliant for the utility grid to be up and running, for you to enjoy using electricity. Power Blackouts does not affect you anymore.

3. Solar Power Looks Good

A factor that has stopped a lot of people of investing in solar in the past is that many implantations of PV looks pretty bad. This is not the case anymore. A few years back, BIPV (building integrated PV) was introduced on the market. BIPV are various sleek methods on how you can integrate solar cells harmonically with the rest of the building. In fact, with some of these technologies, you can’t even tell that they are generating electricity. Look up solar shingles as one example. These looks like normal roof shingles, but generate green and sustainable electricity.

My plan with this article was to spark your interest in harnessing solar energy. I hope I’ve been able to at least motivate you to go and look further into solar panels and investing in a solar system could be a good choice for your situation. If this is true, head over to EnergyInformative, where you can learn more about these technologies.

 

Solar Panels for Homes? Is this a Good Idea?

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Solar panels fitted to our homes will simply turn the Sun’s power into electricity to run or power any number of machines and appliances our home. This is a very modern approach to harness or use the sun’s power. The Sun gives off light and heat in the form of radiation called photons. These photons travel 93 million miles through our solar system to arrive here on earth. This has been the source of energy for our planet since its creation and still is. Solar panels in homes use this same energy and convert it into electricity.

Solar power when used in solar panels in our homes can be one of the most reliable renewable energy sources available to us today. Given ideal conditions if solar energy panels get six hours of sunlight you will have amazing results, your house will have heating and lighting and the use of electronic equipment without having recourse to a power company!
So after initial equipment purchase, zero cost for power that day plus zero use of fossil fuel for you that day. This is a win-win situation for you and the planet, certainly something to consider.

We have to concede that the initial purchase of this equipment is not a small investment and there will be a question as to whether you will get the initial cost back in saving on energy bills. However there may be grants available towards the cost of solar panels for homes a little research here may be very fruitful, and obviously lower utility bills year on year will help every family’s budget.
Another consideration with solar energy panels for homes is that they will give you power when you really need it, when storms knock down the power lines, a natural disaster affect the power grid or even a problem with power plant employees choosing not to work for whatever reason. Your neighbors will be sat in the dark whilst you may not even realize there is a problem.

Usually solar panels are fitted to rooftops of properties on the sun facing side but they also can if space allows be mounted at the top of steel poles set in concrete or even on the ground. These alternatives if space and planning consent allows gives the option of season adjustment as in adjusting its orientation to capture more sunlight.

However it also must be said that depending where you live in the world you may not get enough sunlight for your solar panels to effect real utility cost savings, to be efficient or a run of cloudy stormy days not producing enough electricity to live completely ‘off the grid’ but technology now available with solar panels is a fantastic start and it will only improve in the future and still a great way to be ‘green’ and environmentally friendly.