Thursday, May 17, 2012

Home Solar Kits

September 25, 2010 by  
Filed under Home Family

Switching to using solar panels can benefit you financially in two ways. Using solar power firstly means lower electricity bills. The second financial advantage is a chance to sell excess electricity to the utility company. For the typical household, a solar system will take around 18 months to have made up for the high installation costs (unless the householder has chosen DIY solar panels).

You can decrease your carbon emissions by using solar panels since solar electricity is green, power and emits no harmful carbon dioxide. A typical home solar energy system could save around 2650 lb of CO2 per year – that’s around 30 tons over its lifetime. Technologies that are clean and green will form the basis of the next industrial revolution, predicts Tony Juniper, director of Friends of the Earth.

Federal law allows solar power producers to connect to the utility grid and to be compensated by the utility company for any excess electricity. Net metering, which accounts for a solar power system’s electricity production and allows homeowners to sell excess electricity back into the grid, is allowed in 30 states. The type seen most often is a single, reversible meter. On-site energy demand is prioritized as the solar energy system produces electricity. After this, instead of feeding the excess electricity into a battery storage system, it is fed into the grid, reversing the electric meter. Following each metering period, the utility company will credit the homeowner for the extra kilowatts, by monthly or annual payments.

Every square meter of the Earth’s face receives an average of 164 watts of solar power. In fact enough electrical power could be generated to power the whole planet, from solar panels covering just one square mile for every hundred in the Sahara desert. That’s the unbelievable thing about solar power – there’s so much more of it than we could ever make use of. Having said this, it’s not possible to power a TV or a computer using light or heat as it arrives from the sun. This is where solar panels come in – their job is converting solar power into a form of energy we can use – such as electricity.

Solar cells, when joined together, are called solar panels. Because the electricity produced by a single solar cell is not sufficient for most purposes, solar cells are attached to form solar panels. Solar panels are also called Photo Voltaic or PV modules and are produced in various types and sizes; the solar panel most typically used produces up to 50 Watts and is made from silicon solar cells. Solar panels can be joined together to generate more electricity.

We, in America, make more demands on energy sources than any other nation. Although the US makes up only 5% of the global population, it utilizes over 1 / 4 of the energy consumed by the entire planet. Israel at present has a 100mw solar energy plant which is able to provide more than 200,000 people with electricity; however they now have plans to put up an even bigger one – which will serve at least a million more citizens. Japan uses fifty percent of all solar panels produced throughout the world, and Bavaria contains the world’s largest solar electricity system. These figures show the potential of solar energy, and how far America has to go to reach that potential.

An ever-increasing number of households are being fitted with home-made solar panels. With solar system installation costs still very high (between $7,000 and $40,000 for the typical American home), DIY solar panels have become more popular. And creating and installing your own solar panels is less complicated and easier than you might expect. With the right instruction guide, your home-made solar panels will be safe and very effective. DIY solar panels mean that adding to the long-term financial savings on utility bills; the substantially lower installation costs make this method a massive financial success.

Learn about solar energy for the home, or electricity from the sun on the resource site — http://homesolarsolutions.org/

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