Solar Power For Dummies
Overview
Save money (and the planet!) with this hands-on and timely guide to solar power for residential and commercial use.
Looking for an easy-to-follow introduction to solar energy? Solar Power For Dummies walks you through the differences between residential, commercial, and utility-scale systems, as well as the latest advancements in solar panel technology and energy storage solutions that create new opportunities and applications for consumers and businesses.
You’ll learn all about how to navigate the latest permitting processes for installing solar panels in your home. You’ll also discover how solar power can help you guard against grid instability and generate financial savings while reducing your carbon footprint.
Inside:
- Evaluate your solar potential and design your system
- Navigate federal regulations and tax incentives
- Look to the future with totally new technologies like space-based solar energy
Perfect for homeowners interested in the financial and environmental benefits created by incorporating solar energy into their homes—as well as for those who just want to learn more about the awesome potential of our sun—Solar Power For Dummies is an approachable reference to the benefits, processes, financial implications, and installation options you need to understand before you take advantage of this exciting energy technology.
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About The Author
Ally Stone (DeGunther) has more than a decade of experience in the renewable energy sector. Currently, she is Chief Strategy Officer at Reflect Orbital, a venture-backed startup pioneering the use of satellite reflected sunlight to generate clean energy on Earth. Ally previously held leadership roles at green energy companies Avantus and BrightNight.
Rik DeGunther was a design engineer and worked designing various weather-related and environmental control systems, including all things solar. He also worked as an energy efficiency consultant.
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solar power for dummies
CHEAT SHEET
The words “solar power” often bring to mind solar panels and photovoltaic (PV) solar systems, but you can harness the sun’s energy in a number of smaller ways. The practical and affordable solar projects listed here are ones anyone can build or take advantage of. They explain how to use solar energy to purify drinking water, enjoy a portable shower, and cool your house.
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Good solar designers assess climate particulars to enhance system performance. Climate includes elements such as temperature, precipitation, and wind speed, among other things. When determining whether solar power is right for you, take a look at the following in your climate:
Sunlight: Climate dictates how much sunlight you can expect annually.
If you are installing solar power in your home, regardless of the application type, your first step is to assess your power needs. You can add up the power consumptions of individual appliances and other loads you need to run, but you also need to define how many loads will be running concurrently and at what times.
After you have your solar water collection system in place, you have to move the water to the working apparatus — usually back and forth so you have parallel sets. One pipe is directing water into the collector; the other has the warmed water going back into the workable apparatus.
Here are some tips on choosing your materials:
Pipe makeup: For household systems, copper pipe is the best choice.
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Dozens of different types of systems that use solar energy to supplement your hot water heater are available, but only a few have stood the test of time. Sticking with proven entities is always a good idea, despite the extravagant claims you may hear regarding new technologies. In the real world, Murphy has a voracious appetite, and until something is tested thoroughly, the jury is still out.
Using fans to cool your home is energy efficient. After you determine the natural ventilation scheme in your home, you can enhance the effect with the use of active fans. When choosing fans, check for efficiency ratings.
Fans are rated by how much air they can move in a given amount of time. The most common spec is cubic feet per minute (cfm).
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You can take advantage of prevailing winds to cool your home without using an air conditioner. Using natural ventilation is an easy way to green up your lifestyle and save money by reducing your cooling bills in the summer.
The most efficient ways to move air always complement the natural ventilation scheme and never work against it.
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In your solar power system, you need inverters to take the low-voltage, high-current signals from the PV panels and convert them into 120VAC or 240VAC, which is directly compatible with grid power. Inverters cost around $0.70 per watt, or around $2,600 for a typical application. From a reliability standpoint, they are generally the weak link in any PV system, so quality is a must.
After assessing your solar power needs and the amount of solar gain you can expect, you can turn your attention to mounting your solar collectors to gather as much sunlight as possible. You always have a number of choices for mounting, and the best choice depends not only on maximizing exposure over the course of a year, but also on cost and practicality.
Green Building
Plotting a sun chart tells you how much direct sunlight you can expect over the course of a day so you can determine whether solar power is a viable option where you live. Sun charts are easy to plot and provide a way to represent the movement of the sun across the sky. Here's how to create your own sun charts and how to use them to evaluate the amount of sunshine you can expect to receive at your home.
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Solar energy is leading the green revolution. If you're considering installing a solar photovoltaic (PV) system on your home, you don't need to know how the PV cells work. Your solar contractor knows the details, and they know which types of panels to use in a given application.
But PV systems cost a lot of money, and customers are generally interested in knowing as much as possible about the details.
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Switching to solar power can require a substantial outlay of money. At a minimum, you need to determine the following in order to get a good idea how much your standalone photovoltaic (PV) solar power system will cost:
The total watt-hours per day of energy you'll need: Compile a list of all your appliances and devices and how many hours per day each will be run.
In addition to creating energy, solar technology involves controlling the heat that comes into your home. A radiant barrier is a sheet of thin material that looks like reinforced aluminum foil. You usually tack it up beneath your roof joists, and it keeps a lot of heat out of your attic.
The material itself isn't all that expensive at $0.
To green up your lifestyle and save a bunch of money, you can create a simple homemade solar pool-heating system. You lower the submersible pump into the pool water so it'll always be primed. The pump runs off the 12VDC that the PV module supplies. The amount of water the pump passes through the solar collector panel depends entirely on how much sunlight is incident on the PV module: At night, the pump doesn't run at all.
You can build a very effective solar space heater for around $400 in parts. Over the course of a sunny day, this system can heat a room at zero cost. There are no pumps, fans, or moving parts. The size shown can heat a small office in the dead of winter (as long as the sun is shining), or you can build smaller units to distribute around your house.
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Using the sun to purify drinking water is a great solar project for the do-it-yourselfer. A solar-powered purification system the size of a microwave oven can yield up to 3 gallons of purified drinking water on a sunny day.
Here’s what you need for a basic solar powered water purifier like the one shown in the figure:
Wooden or sheet metal enclosure
Reflective material like aluminum foil
Black paint, used for barbeque pits
Sheet of glass
Insulation (the white foam kind is fine)
Glue (silicon sealant or similar weather-resistant
material)
Black tray that can absorb heat
Catch trough and container for purified water
A cross-section of a water purification system.
To green up your life, you can build and cook with a solar oven. A solar oven can bake at temperatures above 350°F. You can't rely on precision temperature control, so you have to stick with foods that aren't fussy. But plenty of foods fit the bill.
You can set a solar oven anywhere you want as long as it will get plenty of sunlight.
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Controlling the amount of sunlight that enters your house or patio is an easy way to cut your cooling and heating bills, regulate your home's temperature, and enhance the appearance of your house. Window coverings are a great way to control the amount of light that comes in and to create an insulating or cooling effect in your home.
To find out how you can green up your lifestyle and reduce your utility bills, you can inspect your house for leaks. After performing this inspection, you can plug up leaks and reduce your energy cost and consumption.
Find leaks
You can save from 5 to 30 percent off your heating and air-conditioning bill simply by plugging up air leaks.
Solar greenhouses and sunrooms share some common design features. To design a solar room or greenhouse, you need to understand the greenhouse effect, which occurs when sunlight enters the enclosed space through the glazing (window) and then gets absorbed and stored as heat energy. The heat is then constrained to stay in the enclosed space via the same glazing's insulation properties, plus insulation in the walls.
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Boosting the efficiency of your swimming pool is an important first step in reducing your carbon footprint and moving toward a more sustainable lifestyle. Here's how to make your swimming pool energy efficient so that when you add solar, you get the most bang for your buck:
Reduce bends in the piping: Sharp bends in the PVC piping slow down the flow and require more power to do the same job.
Making and cooking with a solar oven is a cheap and easy way to minimize your power use. You can make a good solar oven for under $40, and it works even if you do a messy job of construction. In fact, they're so cheap, building a sloppy test oven to learn the ropes is a good strategy. Then you can build yourself a quality unit that's more convenient and lasts a long time.
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Not only can you build a solar water-purification system, you can also design it. Designing is just as much fun as building, and it's more rewarding because the system's entirely yours. The system shown here uses distillation, a process that can remove salts, microorganisms, and even chemicals such as arsenic, leaving you with pure H2O.
Radiant floor heat systems use solar power to heat water, which is then pumped through your home's floor. You can use solar-heated water to heat your home off-grid. Radiant heat, without solar, costs much less than forced-air heating for efficiency reasons.
Installing a radiant heat floor system is almost surely not a do-it-yourself project, but it merits elaboration because it's such a complete and effective way to use solar energy water heating.
You can use a portable shower that uses solar energy to heat the water. Solar showers are convenient for camping and backpacking. You can hang one out by your swimming pool for a quick, simple rinse. To use a solar shower, follow these steps:
Fill a specially constructed plastic bag with water and then place it in direct sunlight to heat up.
An integral collector system (ICS) batch system lets you use solar energy to supplement your water heater. If you live in a mild climate, you can install a simple ICS system because you don't have to worry about freezing conditions and super hot conditions. Even if these conditions are rare, you can still install an ICS if you take a few precautions.
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You can take advantage of the chimney effect to cool your home without using an air conditioner. Using natural ventilation is an easy way to green up your lifestyle and save you money by reducing your cooling bills in the summer.
In a closed room, the temperature at the ceiling is always higher than that on the floor because hot air is less dense than cold air.
The cheapest and most effective solar-heating system for your swimming pool is a solar cover. You can get one for around $0.30 a square foot, so covering an average size pool costs about $130. Using a plastic cover alone can extend your swim season a couple of months on each end of the summer. In the Midwest, for example, if you use a cover, you can swim from mid-April until mid-October.
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In addition to using solar energy to provide power for your home, you can also take steps to minimize solar gain in your home. This simple act can keep your house cooler in the summer, thus decreasing your energy bills and reducing your carbon footprint. Installing sunscreens is the cheapest way to prepare a window for the summer season, and it's also one of the best in terms of practical effect.
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Installing a solar system to power your home is an involved process. Even though you'll be hiring a professional, it helps to understand what's going on. Expect the entire process of installing a full-scale photovoltaic (PV) system to take 90 days or more.
The following list outlines all the things you need to do:
Perform an energy audit.
An attic vent fan powered by solar energy can help cool your home. During the summer, attic temperatures can reach over 160°F. All that heat stays up there at night, and it sinks into your house through the insulation in your ceiling. A properly designed solar attic vent fan can remove a lot of air over the course of a day, cooling your house in the process.
When you switch to solar power for your home, mounting your photovoltaic (PV) solar panels is of critical importance. First, you need to mount the panels where they'll get maximum sunshine over the course of a year. But the more difficult problem is mounting them with enough integrity that they'll stay put for 25 years or more.
Green Building
If you're considering using solar power but aren't ready to go whole-hog with a photovoltaic (PV) solar power system, here are some small projects you can undertake that will make a huge difference. You can save money and reduce your carbon footprint at the same time.
Install a solar water heater: To install a solar water heater, you have to be good at plumbing, electrical wiring, solder joints, PV panel installation, copper tube cutting, climbing around on roofs, and figuring out what to do when things don't fit right.
Solar photovoltaic (PV) modules are ideal for charging batteries. The electronics are minimal, and the costs are low because of it. When a vehicle sits around without being started up for a while, its battery grows weak. If the battery is old, it's even worse. If you have an old truck, car, or RV that doesn't get started very often, a solar charger may be a very cheap and effective way to recharge those neglected batteries.
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You could install your own photovoltaic (PV) solar power system. Many self-installed systems work just fine, and the owners are happy with the results. On the other hand, there are a lot of reasons to use a contractor. A PV system has many complexities, some of them very subtle. Experience counts for a lot.
Before you go DIY, first consider all the items on this list:
You may not be able to connect to the grid with a self-installed system.
If you're interested in green living, consider some of these options that let you go off-grid with small functions. You don't need to go off-grid with your entire home. You'll save on your power bill, plus enjoy some interesting independence and help save the environment, all in one.
Taking your reading lamp off the grid: If you like to read, you can spend $50 to get a small, battery-charged light (LED) that works for four hours on a four-hour charge.
For heating water with the sun, a wide range of solar collector constructions are available. Some systems are nothing more than solar collectors. For example, when covering your swimming pool with a solar blanket, you simply float it directly over the water. When you want to swim, you remove the blanket.
The efficiency of a collector is a measure of how well it converts radiation into usable heat.
You can heat your pool using solar power. Your pool system already includes the pump, controller, and filter, along with PVC pipes that route the water flow. Simply break into the PVC line after the filter and run a couple of flex hoses (or PVC, if you prefer) to the solar collector panel, which you can lay out on the ground or set against a hill to achieve some tilt toward the sun.
Green Building
The words “solar power” often bring to mind solar panels and photovoltaic (PV) solar systems, but you can harness the sun’s energy in a number of smaller ways. The practical and affordable solar projects listed here are ones anyone can build or take advantage of. They explain how to use solar energy to purify drinking water, enjoy a portable shower, and cool your house.
Solar water heaters can be either active or passive. Passive systems are cheaper because they're simpler and have fewer parts. But they're also less versatile. Active systems, on the other hand, can put out more energy and work under a wider range of weather conditions.
In addition to choosing between active and passive systems, you have a couple of other decisions to make:
Direct systems heat the water right in the collector.
Solar power is very useful for water supply systems. The most common applications are for household water supplies and agricultural and livestock needs. Of course, using utility-provided water is more economical in most places, but in remote locations, it's simply not available. The pipes and trenches that would be required to get to the desired site are often prohibitively expensive.
Your personal situation dictates the type of solar investment that's best for your own home, but some projects stand out because they're practical for nearly every homeowner, in both monetary and aesthetic terms. Here's a list of ten great solar investments:
Landscaping: Planting deciduous trees in the right location around your house gives you cooler summers and warmer winters.
If you want to start using solar energy, you don't have to wait until you have enough money to convert your whole house to use solar energy. You start out simple and work your way up with solar projects and devices like these:
Landscape lighting: This is probably the cheapest way to get started using solar power.
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Solar intertie photovoltaic (PV) systems are not particularly complex. First there are panels, which collect the sunlight and turn it into electricity. The DC signals are fed into an inverter, which converts the DC into grid-compatible AC power (which is what you use in your home). Various switch boxes are included for safety reasons, and the whole thing is connected via wires and conduit.
Most photovoltaic (PV) customers are interested in solar powering their homes because they realize that solar power is good for the environment, among other things. Few other investments can positively impact the environment as much as an intertie (utility-connected) PV system. Here's a short list of PV system advantages:
Lower utility bills: The most obvious advantage of installing solar PV is that you'll reduce your electric utility bills.
Going solar requires an upfront expense. When you go solar, you get a good payback on your investment, but you do have to put out cash upfront. Banks have become very selective about loaning; in general, you need equity in your home to qualify for a second mortgage, and many people have seen their equity disappear during economic downturns.
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A do-it-yourselfer can design and build a solar room for a relatively low cost, with relatively low risk. You don't need electrical wiring or plumbing, and you don't need to obey all the building code requirements that are unavoidable inside of a house.
Before you get into the details of design, you should make some decisions about where you want the room and what kind of environment you want to create.
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Powering your home with rooftop solar collectors is great way to go green while reducing energy bills and your carbon footprint. If you mount solar panels on your roof, you can maximize your solar exposure, so you don't have to worry about shading from your house, trees, and the like. Here are some mounting tips:
Use the roof's pitch to angle your solar collector to intercept the most sunlight without the need for complex brackets.
If you're looking into powering your home with solar power, you need to know about photovoltaic (PV) panels. PV panels, which cost anywhere from $2.40 per watt to over $5 per watt, are the single biggest expense of a PV system. Their placement and mounting affect your system performance more than any other facet of the job.
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Closed-loop, active, antifreeze systems are the most versatile and failsafe of all the solar supplemental water heating systems. Most new solar homes feature a variation of one kind or another.
A special water-heater tank incorporating a heat exchanger works in conjunction with one or more flat-plate, roof-mounted collectors.
A drainback system lets you use solar power to heat water for your home. Indirect, active, closed-loop drainback systems are an excellent choice for heating water unless you receive a lot of snow and have really cold temperatures. They're the best choice in hot climates, although they're more expensive to install than ICS.
Using solar power in your home is inexpensive after the initial start-up costs. It also benefits the environment by reducing your carbon footprint. Here are some more reasons to consider investing in solar power for your home:
Erase your carbon footprint: Your carbon dioxide footprint is a measure of how much carbon dioxide you're releasing into the environment based on your energy-consuming habits.
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Powering your home with solar energy is about as green as you can go. The benefits to the earth are well known, but there are some financial rewards to replacing traditional carbon-based power with solar power as well. Solar is an investment; you must actively go out and purchase solar equipment and install it on your home.
Off-grid solar PV systems are expensive, so find any means you can to reduce the energy requirements. Most off-grid houses use a wide range of energy resources, in sharp contrast to the typical all-electric suburban home. Solar hot water heaters are always good candidates because they're cheaper per kilowatt-hour than an off-grid photovoltaic system, and solar lighting systems are always wise.
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