Solar power system strategies are in. The main reason behind this apparently sudden explosion of interest in solar power systems is twofold: Financial and ecological. Translated, it means that the home or business owner is afraid of the increasing oil costs and is now willing to test with non-conventional renewable energies. On top of this an increasing number of people feel that they would like to be friendlier towards our planet and leave less carbon footprints if possible.

Until not so long ago, these alternative energy structures were rather cumbersome to run, but now they can already assist greatly in powering the energy needs of faraway places and improve commercial electrical operations. They can also help homeowners to offset some or most of their power expenses.

How can we develop a solar power system operation?

The viability of a solar power system, though, is something that many skeptics question. Granted, these systems are not totally ideal, but what is? Anyhow, they are a remarkable option that can help reduce the huge amounts of non-renewable energy that we all consume. If we understand how these operations work we may be able to recognize undiscovered potential benefits and the disadvantages of certain designs.

Components of a solar system

For a solar system to work you need the following components:

Solar cells, panels or arrays – A solar power system is always based on a device that captures the photon energy of the sun. For very small designs you only need small solar cells.

Whether you have a solar power system that was conceived to run only one mechanism or a whole building, you need the right number and size of solar panels or solar panel arrays and arrangements to collect sufficient energy to manage the desired operation.

Once the solar cells or panels have collected the sun’s energy, the next step is to transform it to direct current power. The general efficiency of any solar power system depends significantly on how capable the solar panels are of collecting and transforming the power of the sun into DC (direct current) power).

An inverter – What this component does is take the DC energy that was generated by the solar panels and convert it to alternating current energy. AC power is the kind of electricity required by most major electrical appliances and systems.

The inverter component can increase or decrease significantly the efficiency of a whole system depending on how well it converts DC (direct current) power into AC (alternating current) electricity. A certain amount of loss is generally expected in the transformation though.

A battery or batteries – What this battery or batteries do is to store the AC or alternating current power so that it can be used in the future in electrical systems. As you possibly expected, the batteries also have a strong influence that depends on different aspects. A quality battery can be expected to keep a charge well; if it does not do its job the already absorbed power gets wasted during the conversion process.

The general effectiveness of any given solar power system can be influenced by several various factors. Luckily, the designs produced now are both more efficient and more cost-effective.

In fact, there are already a few solar power system models that are used as the only power source in a number of faraway locations. We should not forget either that many households or businesses put their trust in such solar systems to supply them backup power in case of an emergency.

A solar power system such as it is designed today is definitely not perfect, but it works and helps to solve many problems our society faces. It’s surely a big step in the right direction.