07072010

Best Solar Panels for home

Location, location, location

Before you think of going down the solar powered route you need to consider exactly where you want to put the solar panels...  Remember, companies will quite happily sell you solar panel systems regardless of whether they will actually generated the stated power output or not and a lot of this depends on where you put the solar panels in the first place.

Solar panels, by their nature need clear and unobstructed access to the Sun. Note: by clear we mean absolutely clear. Unlike solar hot water heaters, partially obscured solar power panels will produced drastically less power. This is due to the way solar panels are constructed, they are not made from one massive solar panel, rather a whole set of smaller panels wired in series - now if just one of those smaller solar panels is in the shade, it acts as a block to the power being generated by all the rest. Therefore for maximum power generation potential you want a location which has:

• Visibility to the Sun throughout the whole day, and;
• That visibility is not obstructed by trees, poles, buildings, etc

Now for most people this is achieved by putting the solar panels on the roof; although for this to be perfect the roof in question needs to be on the solar East/West line (i.e. the ridge follows this line) - that way the panel will get the most amount of sun without needing to track the sun across the sky.

As for working out the power you could generate, see the Solar Power Calculator.

As for what is the best solar panel; the best are Mono-crystalline as they are most efficient, but they are not cheap. If you have plenty of space to put up a solar panel system you should go for Poly-crystalline instead. See this article on Solar Power Systems for more details.



Also if you are not in a hurry, there are some interesting technology developments on the way.