How to install solar panel at home's roof top and save electricity and stay of the grid life forever-chapter-1
Before starting a step by step tutorial on How to install solar panel at home's roof top to stay off the grid life, we should know certain basic things first. These are:
- we should know that what actually a solar panel is?
- what are the types of solar pannels?
- How efficient are they?
What are solar panels?
Solar panels are devices that convert the light into electricity (only DC). They are called "solar" panels because most of the time, the most powerful source of light available is the Sun, called Sol by astronomers. Some scientists call them photovoltaics which means, basically, "light-electricity."
Solar panel wings installed on satellite in deep space
A solar panel is a collection of small solar cells. Lots of small solar cells spread over a large area can work together to provide enough power to be useful like an power house. Here the more light hits a cell, the more electricity it produces, so spacecraft are usually designed with solar panels that can always be pointed at the Sun even as the rest of the body of the spacecraft moves around, much as a tank turret can be aimed independently of where the tank is going.
special purpose DS1's solar cells are even more efficient than regular solar panels made for satellites because they use solar concentrators.
Whar are the types of solar panels?
There are two basic types of solar panels, crystalline and thin-film. The characteristics of these are similar but the method of manufacturing is very different for these two is very different.
Crystalline type:
A crystalline module is made from a number of discrete cells, usually 36 for a 12 Volt module. These cells need to be assembled and soldered together by hand, which goes some way to explaining the relatively high price of crystalline modules. Each cell is made from a wafer, composed either of a single crystal (monocrystalline) or many crystals (polycrystalline) of a semiconductor material, generally silicon. The monocrystalline cells are of slightly higher efficiency, but for all practical purposes they can be regarded as the same. Polycrystalline solar modules can be identified by the crystalline appearance of the polycrystalline solar cells.
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Thin Film or Amorphous type:
Thin film or “amorphous” solar modules are made by a different process. A thin film of semiconductor material is deposited on a substrate, usually glass. This substrate forms the body of the solar module. A laser is then used to score the material in order to produce individual cells, which produces the characteristic striped appearance. This method uses less of the semiconductor material and is easier to automate and can be mass produced easily. The solar modules thus produced are therefore are of lower cost. However, commercially available thin film solar modules or amorphous have significantly lower efficiency than crystalline modules. This limits their applications where there is no size restriction on the solar array and adds to the cost of installation.
How efficient are solar panels?
DS1's solar panels convert 22% of their available solar or sun energy into electrical energy or power. This may not sound very good, but it is much better than most solar panels. Most solar panels are fairly inefficient. Less than 14% of the energy that reaches on them will be converted to electricity. DS1's panels are the highly efficient panels available.
Characterstics or operation of 12v 36 cell solar panel:
Here figure shows the relationship between voltage and current for an 12 Volt 36 cell solar module, the most common configuration. The two curves represent different isolation levels.
The current that a photovoltaic module will deliver into a short circuit is known as the short-circuit current or Isc. This is proportional to the insolation, so the more the sun shines the greater the current.
The open circuit voltage or Voc is determined by the number of cells in series, and is not significantly affected by the insolation. You can see that over the working voltage of a 12 Volt load such as a battery the current is nearly constant for a given value of insolation.
In this tutorial we have got a basic knowledge of what is solar panel, what are the types available in the market, which one is cheap and which one have high efficiency, here we have also seen the power characterstics of the 12v 36 cell solar cell configuration.
Now we need to move forward In the next tutorial or post i am going to explain how to choose the solar pannel in quantity as well as quality, and what power rating should be selected to live off the grid life at minimum cost. The next tutorial will assume the total time between sun rise and sun set is 7:30 hours.
Thank you for reading. Stay tuned by just following me on google+. and for any query please ask that in comment section.
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