1. Basic understanding of how solar power can work in your home
2. Introduction to Photovoltaic panels.
3. How photovoltaic panels (PV) work.

While the technology behind solar cells continue to advance every day, most solar cells are made up of mono crystalline silicone wafers with some trace elements used as coating. It produces solar electricity by making use of the photons that come from sunlight, have these photons hit and excite the electrons in the solar cells and thus produces electricity.

Each brand or manufactured solar cell wafer may have different wattage output, and to reach a higher wattage than what one solar cell wafer can produce, you simply combine more wafers into an array.

The main benefits of using solar panels is that it is very low maintenance and it basically produces electricity for free for the remainder of its life.

The only downside of solar panels is the cost of one of these, as with any new technology, the manufacturing cost have yet to scale to a sizeable amount before the cost of production can significantly lessen.

Here is an interesting video for you to get started on solar panels…

There are more types of solar inverters, but this is the essentials of what you need to know. I will go into more detail on future posts.

Here’s my take on this…

The main distinguishing feature between DC and AC are the positive and negative nodes. For DC, the positive and negative ends are always constant and the same. So electricity only flows one way, all the time.

As for AC, the ends can be reversed or “alternates”. The number of times it alternates is different for some countries. For the US it is 60 times per second while in Europe it alternates 50 times per second. Therefore, what you get from a US wall socket is 120-Volts, 60-cycle AC power.

The big advantage of alternating currents is its ability to transfer large amounts of electricity over long distances by regulating the voltage with a transformer.

For moving 1000 watts of power over a 1km distance, we can…

using the W=VxI

1. either move 1000amps of current with 1volt over a kilometer
2. 1000volts and 1amp over the same distance.

The first one would require a wire diameter that is extremely thick to be able to carry 1000amps. While the second one only requires a thin wire.

The savings are obvious and this is exactly what power companies do. From the power plant they jack up the voltage extremely high, then transfer it through power lines and because high voltage is extremely dangerous, when it nears a load destination a transformer brings the voltage back down for residential, commercial or industrial use.

And that is how power is transferred from the power plants to your home.

All this talk about solar electricity, solar panels for sale, energy conservation and so forth has got me thinking of the day I got strated on my journey on going green.

If you’re starting and you’re like me, I bet you have a ton of questions and you’re confused on what to do. The best place to start, in my case at least, was to take a look at my old notes on how electricity works.

Knowing the basics of electricity is similar to building a solid foundation for a building. Everything will eventually refer back to it, so setting up a good solid understanding of electricity is IMO fundamental to any future solar or energy projects.

What is Electricity?

So let’s get started. If you remember your physics or chemistry class, you know that matter is made up of atoms. And smaller still atoms are made up of protons, neutrons and electrons. If you’re thinking electricity got it’s name from electrons you would be right!

Electrons are not part of the nucleus of the atom and are tiny particles orbiting it. For some elements electrons stay within the atom and do not transfer to other atoms. These are called electrical insulators like wood, plastic, styrofoam and air. Anything that does not conduct electricity falls under this category.

Things that conduct electricity are mostly called metal. These are atoms wherein they have electrons that can freely move about and transfer from one atom to another. This movement of the atom transfers energy or electricity from one to the other.

Amperes (Amps) and Voltage (Volts)

Whenever you hear of electricity the terms amps and voltage readily comes to mind. In simpler terms, all you need to know about amperes is that it is the measure of how many electrons passes through a certain point at a given time. It is the rate of flow or current.

While voltage is the driving force or pressure between two points that pushes those number of electrons. A voltage of 50volts can be lethal.

What are Watts?

I didn’t forget watts. Watts is by definition a unit of measurement for energy conversion.

The formula for watts is:

1W = 1V x 1A = 1 joule of energy per second

To understand energy conversion and how it relates to wattage, lets take a look at a 100watt light bulb and a 50watt light bulb. A 100 watt light bulb needs 100 joules of energy per second to be powered up, while a 50 watt light bulb only needs 50 joules of energy per second.

Making practical use of all these

With the above simple formula you can measure any wattage of any electric consuming object. Take for example a lightbulb, if you live in a country that has 120 volt outlets like the US, you simply have to measure the current or amps that flows out of the outlet to the light bulb to determine the wattage of the light bulb. If the current measures up to be 0.5 amp, you got yourself a 0.5amp x 120volts = 60watt light bulb

Electric Circuits

With some basic understanding of what electricity is or how it is generated, we now take a look at the application of electricity or making use of electricity. Since we know we electrons can move from one place to another, we can make use of this energy.

In order to make electrons move we simply need a negative terminal connected to the positive terminal. The electrons will move from the negative end to the positive end. And in between these two ends we can place an object like a light bulb, an ipod or an electric toothbrush and the electrons will pass by these and make it work… all just to get to the other side.

This is a simple diagram but it is the basics of every electric circuit there is. And one thing to keep in mind is that whatever you want the electrons to do, you can.

More Voltage, Current and Resistance

Moving on with our electricity basics, we have another term that we need to deal with, Resistance. If we analogize that the current is similar to the flowrate of water, voltage the pressure at which water is pushed from one point to another, resistance is the diameter of the pipeline the water if flowing in.

I=V/r

where I = current, V = voltage, r = resistance

With greater resistance, albeit a smaller pipeline the less the current will be. While the bigger the pipeline or the less the resistance, the more the current or flow of electricity will be.

Power and Kilowatt-hours

If you’re wondering how you get billed by power companies, this is it. Power companies charge not by the watts, but by the power we consume. Power is simply work over a certain time period.

So for electricity, power is Watt x Hours or 1000watts x hours to get kilowatts.

If you have a 1.5 kilowatt water heater and you leave it on for 1 hour, it will use up 1.5 kilowatt-hours. And if your power company charges you at 5 cents per kilowatt-hour you get billed 7.5cents for every hour you use that water heater.

So before I make this post any longer, this concludes the first part of electricity basics 101. Stay tune for the next post for some more electricity basics to get you started on the path to green living.