With more and more American homeowners investing in solar energy, have you ever wondered how rooftop solar panels actually work? How exactly do they provide enough renewable energy to power homes and businesses?
Solar energy systems actually aren’t all that complex, and to help you understand them in a little more detail, here is a short explanation of how they work:
What does a solar system need to generate energy?
Solar systems rely upon sunlight to generate renewable energy, and here’s how they do it:
To generate enough energy to power your home, you’ll need an array of solar panels on your roof or in an area close to your home that has access that’s exposed to a lot of sunlight.
For your solar system to perform at its best, it needs to be exposed to as much sunlight as possible.
Here’s the science bit…in sunlight are a number of particles called photons, and when these hit other particles, their energy is transferred into other forms, typically heat. When the photons hit particles contained within your PV cells, they dislodge the additional proton in the layer of silicon wafer that’s negatively charged. Then, that electron becomes attracted by the positive charge found on the other layer of the wafer.
As the additional electrons in the PV cells are activated by the sunlight, they start to alternate between both layers of the silicon wafer, and this is what causes the solar panel to produce an electric current.
As an element, silicon is extremely stable, and it’s this that enables the loose electrons to swap back and forth, continually, for as long as the sunlight is activating them. Due to the fact that there is a continual imbalance between the positive and negative layers, electricity is able to be produced by the panels, throughout the day.
With the ongoing reaction between the electrons, your solar panel starts to produce a direct current, or DC, which isn’t used by the majority of home electrical systems; they use alternating current, or AC, instead. Sound like a problem? Well, the reality is that the power the electrical grid delivers to homes, is also DC, but it still needs to be transformed into AC when produced by solar panels, and this is done with the help of a device often referred to as an inverter.
Will solar panels generate enough energy for you to go off-grid?
While this might be the dream for anyone with a solar panel system, it’s rare that homeowners are able to depend solely on it without having to connect to the grid at some stage. After all, while some regions may be described as sunny (look no further than the sunshine state!), sunshine can’t be relied upon every day, and for all hours of the day. If there isn’t enough sunlight, your solar panel system may not generate enough electricity to power your home, and that’s when you need to tap into the grid.
Solar panel systems aren’t especially complex, but they can help to save money on energy bills, and go a long way towards helping households reduce their carbon footprints.
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