A very attractive point about solar energy is that getting started in solar power is very easy. You can build a small working solar power source for very little cost. Solar power systems are very easy to maintain and expand for more power.
Solar power systems are also very clean, safe and reliable with no moving parts or machinery to look after.
Three Things You Need
First off, you need solar panels! These are what convert sun light into a DC voltage.
Second, you’ll want a way to store this DC voltage for nighttime or cloudy day use. This is usually done with batteries and a battery charging system.
Thirdly, you need a way to convert your stored DC power into AC to run the AC powered items in your home. This is done with an inverter – a device that takes low DC voltage in and generates a higher AC voltage output. Perhaps you’ve seen inverters for use in the car or an RV. Inverters for home solar power are similar and come in many sizes from 50 watts for a laptop computer to several kilowatts for an entire household.
Start Small And Scale Up
You can build a small working power source based on just one 100 watt solar panel. This will give you a chance see how things go together and figure out what works for and what doesn’t.
One of the very simplest ways to get started with solar power is just buy one small solar panel and a set of LED lights rated for the voltage the panel puts out in full sun. Place the panel in a sunny spot outside, run some wiring from there to where you need light, attach the LEDs and viola! You have your first solar power system! Of course, it’s only going to work when it’s light outside 🙂 but you get the point.
A very first step into home solar power generation can be as simple as a small panel with a USB power connector to charge your mobile devices from.
When you get the hang of things and find what works for you, you can scale up for more power if you wish. The beauty of solar is that it’s simply a matter of adding more solar panels, more battery storage and additional or larger capacity inverters. Basically chaining lots of small systems together for more power.
A system built up from several smaller systems offers the benefit of high reliability. In most solar power systems, if some parts fail – say a panel or a battery, there are other working panels and batteries to keep it going. All three components – solar panels, batteries and inverters – for solar power systems are designed to chained together for more capacity.
How Do I Get 24 Hours of Power?
You need a way to store the power generated by your solar panels. As touched on previously, this can be done with batteries and a system to charge them.
It’s like storing water in a reservoir. The reservoir fills with water when it is raining and rivers are running. You have a steady supply of water at all times – rain or shine.
Likewise, the batteries will charge while the sun is out and will provide a steady 24-hour supply of power day and night.
What the charging system does is monitor the voltage level in the batteries. If it falls below a certain threshold, and there is raw DC voltage available from your panels, the charger will feed a regulated amount of current into the batteries to charge them and shut off when the battery is fully charged.
A good charging system will also alert you if your batteries are going bad and need to be replaced. If your have several batteries, battery replacement is easily done without interruption of power.
Your stored electrical power is not unlimited. You will need to be aware of how much power each item plugged into your system consumes. Like the water reservoir, stored power can run low. A plug-in wattage meter is very handy to have.
Knowing the rated maximum wattage a particular item requires will give an idea of how many more components you will need to expand your system.
Putting It All Together
Obviously you will want to find sunny locations to place the solar panels. Roof tops are a great place. They will need to secured so that wind does not blow them away.
Then you’ll need a dedicated out of the way place for storage batteries, chargers and inverters.
Batteries are usually large and heavy – especially the lead-acid type batteries. These will usually be on the floor or some place that can take the weight.
You’ll need to route wires from your solar panels to the area where the chargers, batteries and inverters are.
Then you’ll need to bring the generated AC electrical power to where you want it. For a first system, this can be as simple as an outlet strip from the inverter. Most inverters have a few standard AC outlets on them.
Some Don’ts!
Never attempt to wire your solar power system directly into your existing home wiring. This should be left to a trained electrician who knows what they’re doing!
If your main power is out, NEVER feed your generated power (from any source) back into your main home wiring! This can energize power lines and injure or kill crews working on power lines!
Enjoy Your First Bit of Free Electricity!
Congratulations! You now have your first little bit of free electricity to use. A small starter system will obviously be very limited in power capacity. But you certainly have enough power to run some LED lights, charge mobile devices, run your internet modem or even your home office. A basic starter system can be a great backup power source for a few essentials in the event of a power outage!
This is just the beginning!
If you have comments, questions, leave ’em below! Let’s go solar!
Oren
I really love using solar products. And it is great that we are able to make some of them by ourself at home. So your post is so interesting. Thank you for it. However maybe it would be much more easier to figure out how it works when there are photos which would showing how the tools, accessories or the product look like. How do you think?
Hi Hong, Yes – agreed! This article was just posted. I’ll have to come back and update with photos and refinements. Thanks for your input, it is appreciated! Best to you.