Featured Sponsors
Solar power - Powering Homes and Businesses
Photovoltaic (PV) power systems convert sunlight directly into electricity. A residential PV power system enables a homeowner to generate some or all of their daily electrical energy demand on their own roof, exchanging daytime excess power for future energy needs (i.e. nighttime usage). The house remains connected to the electric utility at all times, so any power needed above what the solar system can produce is simply drawn from the utility. PV systems can also include battery backup or uninterruptible power supply (UPS) capability to operate selected circuits in the residence for hours or days during a utility outage.
There are two general types of electrical designs for PV power systems for homes; systems that interact with the utility power grid and have no battery backup capability; and systems that interact and include battery backup as well.
Grid-Interactive Only (No Battery Backup)
This type of system only operates when the utility is available. Since utility outages are rare, this system will
normally provide the greatest amount of bill savings to the customer per dollar of investment.
However, in the event of an outage, the system is designed to shut down until utility power is
restored.
Grid-Interactive With Battery Backup
This type of system incorporates energy storage in the form of a battery to keep “critical load” circuits in the
house operating during a utility outage. When an outage occurs the unit disconnects from the
utility and powers specific circuits in the home. These critical load circuits are wired from a subpanel that is separate from the rest of the electrical circuits. If the outage occurs during daylight
hours, the PV array is able to assist the battery in supplying the house loads. If the outage occurs
at night, the battery supplies the load. The amount of time critical loads can operate depends on
the amount of power they consume and the energy stored in the battery system. A typical backup
battery system may provide about 8kWh of energy storage at an 8-hour discharge rate, which
means that the battery will operate a 1-kW load for 8 hours. A 1-kW load is the average usage for
a home when not running an air conditioner.
Concentrated solar power systems (Unified Solar) use lenses or mirrors and tracking systems to focus a large area of sunlight into a small beam.
Photovoltaics convert light into an electric current using the photovoltaic effect.
PV Solar
PV systems range from small, rooftop-mounted or building-integrated systems with capacities from a few to several tens of kilowatts, to large utility-scale power stations of hundreds of megawatts. Nowadays, most PV systems are grid-connected, while off-grid or stand-alone systems only account for a small portion of the market.
Residential PV Solar
A typical residential system is around 10 kilowatts and mounted on a sloped roof.
Although rooftop mounted systems are small and display a higher cost per watt than large utility-scale installations, they account for the largest share in the market.