What makes solar power work




















There is 6. Solar panels can be installed in a wide range of places. From larger, countryside solar farms that can support local biodiversity by providing an undisturbed habitat for bees, butterflies and nesting birds, to rooftop panels in city centres that can help combat fuel poverty. Solar panels are very safe. They're mostly made from silicon sheets, and there's no danger of the photovoltaic cells leaking or emitting any toxins or fumes.

Do solar panels work on cloudy days? Does it need to be hot for solar panels to work? How many solar sites does Good Energy own? Your solar panels are made up of silicon photovoltaic PV cells. The electricity produced by your panels is called Direct Current DC electricity, and which is not suitable to be used in your home by your appliances.

Instead, the DC electricity is directed to your central inverter or micro inverter, depending on your system set up. Your inverter is able to convert the DC electricity into Alternating Current AC electricity, which can be used in your home. From here, the AC electricity is directed to your switchboard. A switchboard allows your usable AC electricity to be sent to the appliances in your home.

Your switchboard will always ensure that your solar energy will be used first to power your home, only accessing additional energy from the grid when your solar production is not enough. How much you'll save - and how quickly you'll see a return on your investment in a particular state - depends on many factors, like the cost of electricity, solar incentives available, net metering , and the quality of your solar panels.

When photons hit a solar cell, they knock electrons loose from their atoms. If conductors are attached to the positive and negative sides of a cell, it forms an electrical circuit. When electrons flow through such a circuit, they generate electricity. Multiple cells make up a solar panel, and multiple panels modules can be wired together to form a solar array.

The more panels you can deploy, the more energy you can expect to generate. Photovoltaic PV solar panels are made up of many solar cells. Solar cells are made of silicon, like semiconductors. They are constructed with a positive layer and a negative layer, which together create an electric field, just like in a battery. PV solar panels generate direct current DC electricity. With DC electricity, electrons flow in one direction around a circuit. This example shows a battery powering a light bulb.

The electrons move from the negative side of the battery, through the lamp, and return to the positive side of the battery. With AC alternating current electricity, electrons are pushed and pulled, periodically reversing direction, much like the cylinder of a car's engine. Generators create AC electricity when a coil of wire is spun next to a magnet. Many different energy sources can "turn the handle" of this generator, such as gas or diesel fuel, hydroelectricity, nuclear, coal, wind, or solar.

AC electricity was chosen for the U. However, solar panels create DC electricity. How do we get DC electricity into the AC grid? We use an inverter. A solar inverter takes the DC electricity from the solar array and uses that to create AC electricity.

Inverters are like the brains of the system. Along with inverting DC to AC power, they also provide ground fault protection and system stats, including voltage and current on AC and DC circuits, energy production and maximum power point tracking. Central inverters have dominated the solar industry since the beginning. The introduction of micro-inverters is one of the biggest technology shifts in the PV industry. Micro-inverters optimize for each individual solar panel, not for an entire solar system, as central inverters do.

This enables every solar panel to perform at maximum potential. When a central inverter is used, having a problem on one solar panel maybe it's in the shade or has gotten dirty can drag down the performance of the entire solar array.

Micro-inverters, such as the ones in SunPower's Equinox home solar system , make this a non-issue. If one solar panel has an issue, the rest of the solar array still performs efficiently. Here's an example of how a home solar energy installation works. First, sunlight hits a solar panel on the roof. The panels convert the energy to DC current, which flows to an inverter.

The inverter converts the electricity from DC to AC, which you can then use to power your home. It's beautifully simple and clean, and it's getting more efficient and affordable all the time.



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