The Fascinating World of Solar
Energy
Isn’t it a wonderful idea to get energy
absolutely free of charge. And know it will stay like that
forever. Electricity from solar panels, warm water from a solar
boiler, or cooling from your solar air-conditioning, is absolutely free of
charge.
The sun is our inexhaustible super
energy plant. Contrary to fossil energy it is endless, its
clean there are no CO2 emissions responsible for global warming.
Solar- or
Photovoltaic Panels are silent, clean and hardly need maintenance. With a life
span of about 40 years they will keep on working for you day in and day out.
They can be used everywhere you need electrical energy.
Solar Panels can be easily installed on
the roof top of most houses. And are very reliable because the photovoltaic
effect is a process without any moving parts. A few panels your rooftop are
synonymous to a guaranteed supply of DC current for the years to come.
The installation of a solar panel is simple, but when you are planning on
placing a few of them in an array you will need expertise or a certified
installation company.
A small installation of 4 panels of 150
Wp joined together will supply 32 Amperes of 25 volt DC. Without any additional
measures that is rather useless.
There are two options to overcome this
difficulty. You can charge batteries and convert the battery power to the AC
current you need. Or you can immediately convert
the DC from your panels and connect to the grid.
In our first installation you will need
a regulator that takes care of the proper charging of your expensive batteries.
And an inverter to change the battery power to the AC current you need for your
home appliances. The second solution calls for a specialized grid inverter that
is responsible for the transformation of the power coming from your solar array
to something within the specifications of your electricity company.
Grid connected systems are no solution
for power failures since they will shut off immediately when the grid power
drops below a minimum. This might seem a nuance at first but imagine the
electrical engineer feelings. He assumes to be working on powerless grid. Then
the sun rises and you and you neighbors start to feed the system he is working
on with AC current.
Besides the feelings of our electrical
engineer there is the fact that you are operating a power plant. If the main
supplier of electricity is off-line, you and a few others will get the full load
of the whole grid on your system. And believe me you won’t be able to feed the
Bay Area from your rooftop. In practical terms this means that the system short
circuits. Adding to the already existing problems.
Apart from these apparent difficulties
Solar, Wind and Motion energy is truly a truly free and inexhaustible reservoir
of energy. We still have to overcome some gaps in our knowledge on how to
harness it all. But the enormous amounts of unlimited power available to us
though nature are in sharp contrast to the difficulties we face with
conventional energy sources.
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