Five Things You Need to Know About Solar Panels

When it comes to getting a solar panel installation, you shouldn’t go in blind. Meaning that if you want to get install a solar power system, you should do some research to find out some basic information about solar energy.

Solar Energy Is a Source of Renewable Energy

This a fact that most people know. Solar energy comes from the sun meaning that it is a clean, inexpensive, source of renewable energy, and you can harness it anywhere in the world. When the sunlight hits the earth, at any location, it has the potential to generate solar energy. Because solar energy comes from the sun, it is going to represent an unlimited source of power. Renewable energy technologies are going to generate electricity from resources that aren’t not going to diminish over time. when it comes to fossil fuels, it took hundreds of years for oil, gas, and coal to form, each time one of those resources is burned to generate electricity, that finite resources are moved marginally closer to depletion. When you use renewable energy resources, like wind energy, solar power, and hydropower, to generate electricity, it is not going deplete the resources. There is always going to be a constant source of sunlight to turn into electricity in the future. This is what makes solar power, a source of renewable energy.

With the electricity mix in the United States, it is still going to be made up largely of fossil fuels such as oil and gas, sources of renewable energy, like solar panels, are quickly becoming a larger part of the country’s electricity profile. When the cost of solar panels and other renewable energy technologies are still competitive.

What Are Solar Panels Made Of?

Solar panels contain cells that are called photovoltaic cells, they are made of semiconductors that convert sunlight into solar electricity. When the sunlight hits the photovoltaic cells, the electrons are separated from their atoms and flow through the cell and generating solar electricity.

Today’s photovoltaic cells contained in domestic solar panel installations that can convert around 20% of the sunlight they receive into electricity, and there will be some commercial solar power systems that can research into 40% of the efficiency of the solar panels. But, the technology is continuously advancing fast and the efficiency of the solar panels is expected to increase vastly when the price falls.

The Initial Cost of Solar Panels

The cost of solar panels isn’t overestimated, because though the cost of solar panels is going to be fairly high, but the payback period is going to be fairly short because of the savings on electricity bills and the government aids. Homes that have a solar panel installation are going to be known to sell faster and at a higher price than those lacking a solar power system.

The advancements in technology and rises in the numbers of solar panel installations are going to more than likely bring down the prices, because of the economies of scale and lower cost of materials. The cost of solar panels has been continuously falling since the start of the solar energy industry. When the solar energy industry got its start in 1977, one kilowatt of solar energy would cost around $76.67, not it costs $0.30.

Solar Panels Don’t Need Direct Sunlight

Yes, direct sunlight on your solar panels is going to be ideal, but the solar panels will still generate solar electricity on the cloudy days, and during the winter. However, the solar panels are going to generate solar power at night, but you can get a storage system to solve this issue. The solar battery storage system cost and can be paid off by selling excess energy to the grid and you can be 100%, energy independent. You should keep in mind that solar panels produce free solar electricity during the day, which is during the hours where the electricity is the most expensive.

Different Types of Solar Panels

There are going to be three main options when it comes to solar panels, but the monocrystalline and the two most common ones, then there are the thin-film ones that are a heavier and less efficient option, but they are also cheaper.

The monocrystalline solar panels are sliced up from the larger silicon crystals to give them a blue or black appearance. This sort of solar panel has a higher efficiency of a solar panel. One set back is going to be the curved edges, which ends up resulting in wasted space when multiple photovoltaic cells are combined to create the solar panels. Although they are more efficient than the polycrystalline solar panels, when it comes to the layout of the solar panels, they are only slightly more.

The polycrystalline solar panels are created by pouring silicon models instead of cutting them from crystal. This process is going to lead to perfectly square photovoltaic cells, but they are less pure than the monocrystalline photovoltaic cells. While the polycrystalline solar panels are going to be less efficient than the monocrystalline solar panels, they can be tightly spaced together on solar panels, but they end up being only a little less efficient than the monocrystalline when it comes to a solar panels layout.

The thin-film solar panels aren’t made up of silicon crystals, but by spreading a layer of silicon onto a surface. Although the thin-film photovoltaic cells are cheap to produce, they are going to be heavier and less efficient than the monocrystalline or polycrystalline photovoltaic cells.

It used to be that you had to choose the more expensive monocrystalline if you had a smaller and less efficient but more cost-effective polycrystalline without compromising too much on energy efficiency.