How Solar Power Works: A Fast And Easy Guide

There are two general forms of solar power used for households:

Solar Thermal

Solar thermal can be divided in two.

1. Solar Power Heating water. Solar power can heat water using reflectors, or thin, radiator-like tubes. The heated water can then be stored in a hot water tank for all the hot water uses of a home, saving the electricty or gas that would otherwise be consumed to power an on-demand hot water system or hot water tank. On top of that, if your home plumbing allows it (and most homes in the UK do), the solar heated water can heat your home too, reducing or even eliminating your household heating costs.

2. Another way to harness solar power is to collect the sun's energy during daylight hours and release it in the evening. Typically, a large mass such as large amounts of rock, a mass of concrete or even a large volume of liquid gets heated up when the sun is out, then cools off in the evening - warming up the house.

Some commercial-scale solar plants use a variation on this technique to focus the sun's rays onto water, super-heating it until it evaporates. The steam drives a steam turbine to produce electricity.

Photovoltaic cells (PV cells)

This is likely what you think of when you think 'solar power'. These cells convert sunlight directly into electricity. You may have seen panels of PV cells mounted on house roofs, or on state of the art solar power car prototypes.

The panels you see on houses are just a collection of many PV cells all wired together. Each cell is made from silicon wafers. Strangely, silicon in it's pure form is a poor conductor of electricity, but the PV cell manufacturing process adds an impurity that causes electrons to scuttle around when hit with sunlight. Those electrons generate electricity.

You'll commonly hear mention of an 'inverter' when talking about wiring up solar panels to your home. The inverter is simple. Solar panels generate direct current (DC) electricity - the kind that's used in small devices with batteries, like mp3 players, laptops, cell phones etc. However, your home uses alternating current (AC). An inverter is the device that switches between the two. Like the power supply of your laptop, or your cell phone charger.

How much electricity do solar panels generate? It depends of course on the size and efficiency of the panel, the time of the day, the angle of the cells to the sun, weather conditions, and the sun's intensity. The only real limit to the amount of electricity you can generate is how much surface area (land or rooftops) and money you have for the panels.

Advances are being made all the time. New types of solar cells - known as 'thin-film' cells have been made that look promising. They don't require silicon, they're cheaper to manufacture, and they fit a wider variety of surfaces because they're flexible - they can be bent. They're still not as efficient as the standard silicon variety, but advancements are being made regularly in research labs all over the world, and many manufacturers see thin-film as the future of solar power.

Chris Kapersky
June 12 2009

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Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?expert=Chris_Kapersky

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