Solar Panels For Homes: How To Choose Them Appropriately

The sun is a source of renewable energy called solar energy. Solar cells are employed to turn this energy into electricity. Solar cell is also known as photovoltaic cell or PV for short. A single solar cell generates only small amount of electricity, so solar cells are interconnected and packaged into panels. Solar panels for business purposes and solar panels for homes are available.

As a rule, solar cells are manufactured of crystalline silicon. When open to sun, wafer-based crystalline silicon cells produce electricity. An average of 13% of solar energy is converted to electrical power. Presently, 18% is achieved, but 30% is a targeted figure by researchers.

If you are contemplating to install a solar-powered system for your house or your business, solar panels for homes are the major piece of hardware you should buy. Basically, methods of manufacture and materials used vary for each type of panels available in the market, so you should know the requirements of your system to be able to pick the right home solar panel.

One thing to consider is whether your system will be stand-alone or grid-tied. In addition to that consider your geographical area and choose the right solar panel for your location. If you live in a place where the sun always shines, buy the concentrating solar collectors. These kinds of panels are angled to collect direct sunbeams. Otherwise, choose the non-concentrating solar collectors, because they are able to absorb reflected sunbeams as well.
Solar panels that can be used in your residence are available in a variety of power output ratings, from 60-190 watts. If you need greater output than 190 watts, you will need to get more panels and set up an array of panels.

Depending on the brand name, one solar panel is priced approximately $1,000. Mitsubishi, Sharp, Evergreen, Kyocera, Sanyo and Uni-Solar are popular brands. These products come with 20 years of warranty. Preferably, select brands that have low manufacturing impact on environment.

You need to think about the efficiency of individual brands because systems with greater efficiency will pay for themselves in less time. Efficiency of between 16 and 18% is already good, so you sould expect around 10-year payback period. This will be cut to four years when panels with 25% efficiency would be available in the future.

With new panels costing about $1,000 each, the entire system for your residence can cost you $20,000, if a contractor does the installation for you. If you do it yourself, the cost will be cut to less than 50%. You can save even more if you find broken panels and fix them yourself.

The market trend for solar panels slants towards more affordable panels. In addition, the federal and state governments offer incentives that help reduce the total cost of a solar energy system. Keeping these factors in mind, many homeowners are considering installing solar energy system for their homes.

$20,000 for the cost of a system that could power a standard-size house is still beyond affordability for the majority of people. The solution then is to install a solar energy system that only partially covers the energy needs. Solar panels for homes could be installed for $5,000 and are enough to take one third of the energy requirements. The number of residences powered by solar panels for homes is expected to grow in the future, thus sustaining a greener planet.