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Use the Sun to Cut Your Electricity Bills down to $0 Before the work of a French physicist in 1839, scientists from all over the world dreamt of a day when we could harness the light from the sun in a way that we could convert its photon (light) energy into electrical current to provide power for us to use. Although this dream's first practical success was observed by Charles Fritts in 1883, solar cells were not given much recognition until the work Russel Ohl did on silicon solar cells by 1941, and until the first commercial solar panel was released on the market at New York in 1954. "So how do solar panels work exactly?" Solar panels convert light energy from the sun into an electrical current that we can use for our home appliances or for our business facilities, or even both; which saves energy as the sun is a renewable source. It also saves money as you don't have to plug those appliances into your wall sockets and drain the energy from external power suppliers that you pay for. Light from the sun, travelling as packets of energy called photons, is absorbed by tiny little cells inside the solar panel, which then convert the energy of light photons into electrical current. Solar cells are often referred to as Photovoltaic (PV) cells. "What can solar power do for me?" PV systems are a usually a set of tall and thin panels that are placed side by side on the sloping face of a pitched roof, to enable them to 'catch' enough light and convert it to energy. You may have seen examples of this yourself. The electrical current produced by these panels then flows into our home to be used by appliances that we choose. This means you no longer need your mains supply at home for satisfying your electrical needs for those appliances. Solar panels are generally quite complicated and the range of benefits you can gain from using them is also quite large. For example, you may have used solar energy to run the two-way powered scientific calculators, which have a very simple solar power harnessing system that allows them to operate in absence of the main battery. The energy demands of your home can also be met in a similar way by using efficient solar panels. Whether you choose to power only a handful of appliances in your home, or even your whole house altogether, solar panels are definitely the right option for you. When they were first put on the market, solar panels were very expensive. Even though the price has gone down by 80% since then, they can still cost between $20,000 and $40,000. This is an overwhelming price to pay just for our electrical energy needs - about 10 times the amount of money we spend per year on our electricity already. "But I can't pay so many thousands of dollars...does that mean I can't get solar power for my home?" No, you may still be able to get solar panels even if you can't afford them! Fortunately, governments and local councils of many cities and countries all around the world now offer an incentive towards "going green", which means you may be entitled to a money grant which you can use to invest in any energy saving idea you may have, including solar panels, of course. "How can solar panels allow me to pay nothing for my household electricity?" The main benefit of using solar power to provide electricity for your whole house is, of course, that you will no longer be dependent on your external power supplier; which means you no longer have to pay electricity bills! But there is another additional benefit of using solar power which not many are aware of. This benefit is called net metering. Net metering is something that homeowners do to earn money by doing literally nothing - let's say, for example, that your solar panels generate 10,800,000 joules of energy per month (which is how much energy you need to power a 100W light bulb, for one hour a day for 30 days), but you only need 800,000 joules and so you don't need the rest of the 10,000,000 joules of energy. "What happens to the extra electricity my solar panels make? The electricity I don't need?" You can sell this energy to your local grid! Solar panels not only enable you to cut your electricity down to $0, but they can also allow you to make a lot of money by selling your extra energy to your local power grid! You may wonder why it is that your local power grid would offer you money in return for your extra electricity. They are in need of electricity too, that they can then sell further. In fact, on average it can cost your local power grid between $20,000 and $80,000 to run just a few power lines through a distance of 1 mile. This is more than the money people pay (on average) for their home's electricity over a course of 30-40 years. This is why it is beneficial for them to buy more electricity from you. Even so, it is far, far more beneficial for you to use solar power as you will literally have no worries for your electrical energy supply, and, since this is a future-proof solution (of course our sun isn't really going to explode at least for the next 5 billion years), you'll be making money constantly without having to work hard for it at all. Solar panels are well worth even 10 times the amount of investment you make to get them. However, be sure to save your home's electricity in other ways too, so your solar panel's energy will not go to waste. Before buying solar panels for your home, you should ensure that you are already saving as much electricity as you can. This will allow you to benefit most from solar panels as you will not be wasting energy.
Article Source: http://www.bharatbhasha.net Article Url: http://www.bharatbhasha.net/family.php/261155 Article Added on Thursday, September 9, 2010
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