Ninety-three million miles from Earth, our sun is 333,000 times the size of our planet. It has a diameter of 865,000 miles, a surface temperature of 5,600°C and a core temperature of 15,000,000°C. It is a huge mass of constant nuclear activity.Directly or indirectly, our sun provides all the power we need to exist and supports all life forms. The sun drives our climate and our weather. Without it,our world would be a frozen wasteland of ice-covered rock.Solar electricity is a wonderful concept. Taking power from the sun and using it to power electrical equipment is a terrific idea. There are no ongoing electricity bills, no reliance on a power socket: a free and everlasting source of energy that does not harm the planet! Of course, the reality is a little different from that. Yet generating electricity from sunlight alone is a powerful resource, with applications and benefits throughout the world.But how does it work? For what is it suitable? What are the limitations? How much does it cost? How do you install it? This book answers all these questions and shows you how to use the power of the sun to generate electricity yourself.Along the way, I will also expose a few myths about some of the wilder claims made about solar energy and I will show you where solar power may only be part of the solution. Although undoubtedly there are some significant environmental benefits of solar electricity, I will also be talking about where its environmental credentials have been oversold.I will keep the descriptions as straightforward as possible. There is some mathematics and science involved. This is essential to allow you to plan a solar electric installation successfully. However, none of it is complicated and there are plenty of short-cuts to keep things simple.
The book includes a number of example projects to show how you can use solar electricity. Some of these are very straightforward, such as providing electrical light for a shed or garage, for example, or fitting a solar panel to the roof of a caravan or boat. Others are more complicated, such as installing photovoltaic solar panels to a house.Solar electricity is produced from sunlight shining on photovoltaic solar panels.
This is different to solar hot water or solar heating systems, where the power of the sun is used to heat water or air.Solar heating systems are beyond the remit of this book. That said, there is some useful information on surveying and positioning your solar panels later on that is relevant to both solar photovoltaics and solar heating systems.If you are planning to use solar power to generate heat, solar heating systems are far more efficient than solar electricity, requiring far smaller panels to generate the same amount of energy.Solar electricity is often referred to as photovoltaic solar, or PV solar. This describes the way that electricity is generated in a solar panel.For the purposes of this book, whenever I refer to solar panels I am talking about photovoltaic solar panels for generating electricity, and not solar heating systems.
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