Obviously solar power system cuts-off electricity bills or totally zeroing it. But aside of the financial advantage, there are other major importance why the use of solar energy becomes a modern trend.

The power of the sun is enough to supply electricity to the entire planet. Solar energy has been there over 5 billion years. Today’s technology allows us to harvest that free energy through solar panels. In the coming years, solar power system will be a lot cheaper to produce.

Save the environment

Remember the cartoon series “Captain Planet”? Yes, why not become a super hero? Using solar power is helping the environment because it can diminish the consumption of coal or fossil fuels. Conventional power plants emit large volume of carbon dioxide to the environment not to mention the solid and liquid waste it leaves. Today the world produces 50 billion tons of greenhouse gases (C02e) every year. A 40% increase than in 1990’s.

If people will widely use the power from the sun, gas toxins will become less. This means that greenhouse effect or the climate change will be slower or eradicated.

What is a Grid-Tie Solar Power System?

Grid in electrical lingo means an interconnection of electrical network from power plants to the consumer. So Grid-tie means a connection from Solar Power System to an existing commercial power supplier.

The purpose of a grid-tie solar system is to minimize the power consumption from commercial supplier by having its own energy supply. This converts into savings on monthly electricity bill.

On a grid-tie connection, Solar panel is connected to the Inverter. The inverter converts *Direct Current (DC) to Alternating Current (AC) so that it can be used for appliances. But before the electricity reaches the load, inverter is connected to a net meter to measure the current solar panels produced. Then it is connected to the house’s Main Panel Board which is also connected from the power plant. A “solar-power-first” electrical policy applies where power generated from the solar panel is consumed first before the ones from the power plant. So this means that electricity bill is really reduced or much if your solar panel is generating more current than you can use, the power plant will buy your excess power output. This is called as “net energy metering (NEM)”.

Direct Current is the current charging used for batteries. Alternating current is for household and commercially used electricity.

What is Off-Grid Solar Power System?

Most people imagined that having a solar power means that you are independently have own power supply in a remote area. That is 100% correct!

Off-grid Solar Power System lets you use power in daytime or night time. This is because the solar panels are connected to a power bank (batteries) where electricity is stored until it is used. Let us break down how the components are connected.

In an Off-grid connection, solar panel(s) are connected into a controller then into a battery. The controller is the one that monitors the current coming from the solar panels are enough to charge the batteries. Then it enforces an action not to overcharge the batteries and make sure that the excess current does not go back to the solar panels.

Batteries are 12v power or you can connect in series to have higher voltage (DC). Nowadays some lights and few appliances can run in 12v which you can directly connect to the battery. However most of our house appliances are running in 220v or 110v in some other countries (AC). To augment this compatibility issue, an Inverter is needed to power these appliances. The inverter converts *Direct Current (DC) from the power bank into an Alternating Current (AC) to be used for the appliances.