By: Peter Borgner
Solar panels are built to harness the incredible reservoir of power from our sun to another form of energy. Generally the energy that results will be available in the form of heat (to heat water for example) or electricity that might be used to energize anything from a small radio to a complete house.
In this commentary I am going to write about the more substantial residential and commercial panels that are designed to generate power for the home or business, where such panels are most often installed on the top of the home or in close proximity to the building if space permits. We are also going to focus on the type of panels that generate electrical power known collectively as Photovoltaic panels.
Solar panels are a great way to reduce energy costs and to lower your greenhouse gas footprint, and to become more self-sufficient. They are now becoming extremely popular in inner-city areas where clean energy advocates and law makers are creating incentives for this safe and quiet alternative energy source. The state of Nevada, for example, has been offering massive rebates on the up-front expense in acquiring and installing a residential solar system.
After the panels are operational, electricity from the system is used to energize the house, or, when electricity is being generated in excess of demand, diverted back to the grid, where it is purchased back by the electrical power company. There might be situations when you are making income from your system. With rebates figured into the initial cost it will generally take from 17 to twenty-three years to get back the initial cost, at which time the system will essentially be generating electricity from the sun for free.
One little-known fact, however, is that solar panels are, at first, contributory to green-house gas emissions because it requires an input of power to construct the solar panel, that this power is most often carbon-based, and front-end loaded, and that therefore there is a time period during which the solar cell has actually contributed to carbon emissions rather than detracted from them. Until such time as the solar panel has generated electricity equivalent to the power used to manufacture it (its fossil-emission payback period) it is actually a contributor to carbon emissions. This fossil-emission payback period is normally considered to be six to 8 years.
Low power panels are normally available in 12 v or 14 volt configurations, whilst many high power panels are only available as 24 v. As solar panels are DC, you would generally require a power inverter that changes the voltage from one-voltage DC into another-voltage Alternating Current to make it compatible with the power that feeds both the building and the grid.
Todays solar panels are constructed using pairs of sheets of silicon, doped with phosphorus and boron particles. High-tech Amorphous silicon solar panels are a powerful, emerging line of photovoltaics that differ in output, structure, and production than traditional photovoltaics which use crystalline silicon. Another type, H-AS solar panels are manufactured in the same way, but they are just one micrometer thick by laying down polymorphous silicon at very intense pressures and temperatures.
Solar panels are normally maintenance free and many manufacturing companies will supply a warranty of electrical output sometimes for as long as twenty-five years.
Solar panels are installed on whichever side of your house gets the most solar exposure. In locations that are south of the equator this would be the north-facing side, and in locales that are north of the equatorial line its the south-facing aspect.
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