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Posts tagged Solar Energy
Different Sources of Renewable Energy
Oct 11th
By the definition, renewable or alternative energy is the electrical energy, which is been generated naturally, and that is making use of naturally available raw materials. The sources of the renewable energy include wind, water and hydroelectric power & solar. To nature, the renewable energy sources is considered as her best friend. As names suggests, wind, solar, as well as water energies are all generated from wind, sun, and water.
The solar energy is been derived from sun radiations as well as converted to the home usable sources like heat, electricity, light chemical as well as mechanical power sources. The solar energy has also gained the acceptance to modern world, since it is cheap, reliable, to start as well as comparing the maintenance with some other sources, it is very less expensive. Also, its eco-friendly aspect makes that best to consider, though initial setup want financially. The examples of the solar energies include; concentrated solar power, solar cells, as well as photo electrochemical cells.
Wind energy, is one more option while considering the renewable energy sources. The wind is abundant in a lot of neighborhoods thus, the reliability, is considerably the cheap except for the initial setup for turbines that don’t come cheap at around $200, the clean sources as not the emissions are also involved.
Water closes main sources of the renewable energy sources and water energy is a view from point of that being kinetic. Also, with this particular property, water is harnessed & used to drive the power turbines for generating the electrical energy. At the low gradients water will turn huge & heavy turbines. The water energies include osmotic energy, hydro electric energy, micro hydro systems and oceanic energy. Some other alternative sources include; liquid bio-fuel solid biomass,, geothermal as well as bio-gas.
Solar refers to the solar energy that we get daily, either directly or else indirectly from sun. The solar energy is used for several things, like heating, electricity for the homes, schools, buildings, cooling as well as ventilation, water heating, and businesses.
Ocean make use of heat from sun to produce the thermal energy and it can be used as the mechanical energy as well as tidal waves. The geothermal look to interior parts of earth to heat as well as is used for heating & cooling, and electricity.
Wind helps heat of a sun to earth and wind unite with heat of a sun to causes the evaporation. Whenever water gets the rain it may produce energy that will then get captured by the hydropower. Hydropower takes the energy from the flowing water as well as captures that, and then turning that in electricity.
Solar Panels in the Snow and Other Shading Events
Oct 9th
The winter months have brought lots of snowfalls, or as they are known in the world of solar energy, ‘shading events.’ You might be forgiven for wondering what exactly happens to the performance of solar panels when they are covered in snow, or anything else for that matter.
Shading is a big issue for solar arrays. A small amount of shading on one solar panel can result in a big power loss for the entire system. This is because of how they are connected together; a solar panel is made of a number of solar cells connected in series. Each solar cell has a current of around 8 Amps and a small voltage of 0.6V or so when under full sunlight. For those who remember their physics classes from school, this means that when they are connected in series the voltages add up but the current stays equal. Solar panels are then connected together in series to make a string, so the current still stays the same (on large arrays multiple strings are connected in parallel).
What this means is that if one solar panel, or even one cell of one solar panel is affected, it will affect all the others. When a cell is shaded its output current decreases, which means the current for all the other cells and modules is also limited. So one small patch of shade can disproportionately reduce the power output of the whole system.
This effect can be limited by a number of means.
The best way is to make sure your solar panels are not going to be shaded in the first place. This should be checked as part of the site survey, conducted by your MCS accredited installer. You should ensure that nothing will shade the modules during the middle of the day, when your system should be producing the most energy. Shading can be checked using a special design tools that show the path of the sun behind various shading objects. This can be either a lens that shows the horizon and path of the sun in front of you, or a full design software package that uses photographs of the surroundings.
With snow it does help to clear it off. But there isn’t usually much sun when its snowing, and if the sun does come out, the snow melts pretty quickly.
If you cannot eliminate shading as is often the case in built up areas, there are several technologies that can limit the effect of it. Many solar panels now include bypass diodes that disconnect groups of solar cells if they are shaded. It is fairly crude but often works well. When you buy solar panels make sure to ask about bypass diodes.
A second technology that is not available yet in Europe but soon will be is distributed conversion. Here, rather than have power electronics (like the inverter) positioned all in one place, you have some electronics placed on each module. This allows each module to operate independently. One company in the US called Enphase claims this technology increases power output by upto 25 percent.
These are all things to bear in mind when buying a photovoltaic system.