Solar power is generated when energy is extracted from the suns rays through the use of photovoltaic cells (commonly referred to as solar cells). These cells convert photos (from the suns rays) into electricity, and this process is known as the “photovoltaic effect.”

Many people are beginning to invest in such technologies to avoid rising electricity prices and to help our environment. If every home could be fitted with solar panels, then the strain on power stations would decrease dramatically, which means we wouldn’t be left as dependable on fossil fuels as we currently are.

There are many alternatives to solar power, so why should we invest our money into solar technologies, rather than lets say, home wind turbines, or a geothermal energy system? To answer this, we shall look at the advantages and disadvantages of the technologies above.

Solar Panels:

Advantages – widely available, relatively easy to install, very significant output, a solar panel will pay for itself in two to three years, lifetime of 20 to 30 years, modern cells can harness power on cloudy days, can bring power to remote locations.

Disadvantages – costly to begin with, older technologies won’t work too well if cloudy.

Wind Turbines:

Advantages – fairly cheap for a home turbine, can be used in harsh conditions.

Disadvantages – totally dependent on the wind, small output, larger turbines can be noisy, wind farms are seen by many as eyesores, larger (more effective) turbines can be very expensive.

Geothermal Energy:

Advantages – can aid in the heating of hot water, save money on running your boiler, can supply effective underfloor heating, heat from the ground can be relied upon.

Disadvantages – have to lay hundreds of meters of piping underground, hard to fix a leak, expensive, longer time to heat water than a boiler.

So there we have the advantages and disadvantages of each. Assuming you do not live by a rapid stream or running river (which rules out hydroelectric power), then as you can see from the above text, solar power is your best option. Solar panels offer many more friendly factors and less disadvantages than other technologies.

A proven method is to have more than one of the above technologies installed around a home (all three would be a dream, but also leave a large hole in your wallet). So if you have the spare cash, are interrested in saving money on future electricity bills, care for the environment, and would like to be less dependent on fossil fuels, why not take a deeper look into the world of renewable energy resources.

http://www.clean-energy-ideas.com/solar_panels.html

Although there are many individual ways in which solar cells can be used, there are still only 4 basic applications to use them. Essentially, any way a solar cell can be used will fall into a category that I shall briefly describe below.

Utility Grid Connections - This is when solar cells supplement energy needs for the house or commercial business, being hooked into the regular electrical grid and supplying power directly through the lines. If more electricity is generated by solar than is needed, many electrical companies will give credit and/or refunds for the extra power sent back into the lines.

A Grid Interactive System - When solar cells are used to maintain and charge up battery back-up systems for household or commercial usage. Any person or business would use a system like this to insure continued power if main grid electricity was shut down for any reason. Computer banks might benefit greatly from this technology.

Remote Solar Cell Usage – Solar cells and panels used as an electricity supply in places where electrical service has not been developed yet. Wilderness cabins, undeveloped landscape and 3rd world countries would all benefit with using solar power in these remote areas.

Product Applications for Consumers – Basically the use of solar cells to replace battery applications in a wealth of products. Things like calculators, cap fans, and any low voltage toy can be made to run off of solar cells saving on battery use and consequently, landfill issues for discarded batteries.

With the newer higher efficiency solar cells and panels on the market today, these applications have become more common and useful than ever before.

Handbook of space-radiation effects on solar-cell power systems,

Product Description
National Aeronautics and Space Administration Under Contract NASw-1345. January 1968… More >>

Space Environmental Effects on Solar Cell Power Systems

Currently, most solar technologies are delivered via silicon crystals, whose highly refined nature and relative scarcity make them expensive components in the solar process. This makes the end-product equally expensive, and cost is one of the factors limiting the use of solar panels to generate energy.

Plastic, or polymer, solar cells are relative newcomers to solar technology, but their potential advantages – lower cost, lighter weight and greater flexibility – promise to sweep the solar industry, once sourcing and manufacturing are refined.

Polymers are plastic-type substances, usually made from petroleum. Organic plastics, typically represented by such products as amber and shellac (or tree sap), may soon be available from cellulose, or food products like corn, making organic polymer solar technology not only inexpensive but environmentally friendly; i.e., disposable.

Konarka Technologies, Inc., recently announced that their flagship product, Power Plastic®, was rated at 6 percent efficiency. This may not seem like much, but solar panels currently in use rarely boast more than 12- to 14-percent efficiency, and polymer cell technology is still in its infancy.

For Konarka to achieve 6 percent with its flexible organic based photovoltaic (PV) solar is truly an important milestone, as co-developer Dr. Alan Heeger of the University of California (Santa Barbara) notes.

“This progress gives us confidence that we are on a technology pathway toward the vision of high efficiency, low cost ‘plastic’ solar cells.”

Heeger, one of the co-founders of Konarka, received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2000. He and his colleagues at UCSB are currently focused on issues related to the fundamental electronic structure of polymer solar cells, and hopes in the near future to bump that efficiency rating to a full 10 percent, which would make it highly competitive with silicon-based solar.

Another discovery, from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, promises to improve polymer solar material by substituting a silicon atom (or a crystalline) for a carbon atom in the backbone of the polymer. Eventually, says UCLA researcher and co-author Hsiang-Yu Chen, solar cells may be as thin as paper, attachable to any surface, and colored to match different applications.

Imagine hanging a solar panel alongside your deck or patio that looks like a Van Gogh!

Solar Cell Phone Charger

Among the various solar products out there today, whether it’s solar garden lights or solar panels for your home, the solar cell phone charger – or as people call it “Portable Solar Power” – is the new trend; with billions of people using cell phones around the world, why not harness the power of the sun for the benefit of the world in which we live in.

The solar cell phone charger lets us charge wherever, whenever, providing us with power even in the most remote locations. Some solar cell phone charger will recharge our devices, giving us up to 96 hours of standby on our mobile, up to 40 hours on iPod, up to 5 hours on games console, up to 48 hours on your PDA and up to 6 hours on MP3/MP4 players.

Some of solar cell phone charger comes in a water resistant, colorful rubberized casing, tough and powerful, featuring an LCD screen that displays battery capacity and the level of charge. It also has short-circuited protection, over-charging protection and over-discharging protection.

Solar cell phone chargers are surprisingly portable, just a few inches long and about 5 ounces in weight. These solar cell phone charger are highly rated and can deliver a full charge to your cell phone in about an hour just using the sunlight.

Most will charge your device in ample time, about the same as a USB port. Of course using most solar chargers doesn’t discount the in-wall or USB option if direct sunlight isn’t available.

For more information, visit Solar Cell Phone Charger Website.

Solar Cell Phone Charger

Fossil fuels nowadays are quickly being used up. In the event that they will become extinct, the only energy that may take its place is solar energy. In fact, some people have started to build homemade solar cells and have even begun using them to provide electricity and heat, not only in their homes, but also in some workplace, establishments, etc.

Solar energy is more abundant than other types of energy. It is also renewable so there may not be reasons as to why it will run out. This kind of energy also does not produce pollution, which means that using it may aid in lessening the occurrence of global warming and other situations that put our environment in danger.

Without a collection of solar cells, we may not be able to produce solar power. Those cells may actually be created through uncomplicated methods. The first step that a person needs to do in order to make a solar cell is to obtain silicon from the chemical: silicon dioxide. To ensure that the silicon is free from all impurities, it is first placed in a very hot furnace. Heating the silicon rigorously will bring us silicon that is 99% pure, which is what we need in creating a solar cell.

The next thing that must be done is to crystallize the silicon. The 99% purified silicon must be reheated until it reaches melting point, after which boron is mixed. That combination will then give the silicon positive electrical charges.

Once the silicon is positively charged, it is then cut into sheets that are measurable in 200 up to 300 microns. Afterwards, the silicon sheets are dipped thoroughly into chemical water for them to be charged negatively. Once charged negatively, the so called ‘layer of anti-reflection’ is put in to darken the cells, which can maximize the total solar energy tapped by the mixture.

The last step in the creation of a solar cell is affixing conductors, either silver or aluminum, for the cell to be able to conduct the needed electricity. The end result, of course, is the need to group the cells together to be able to produce solar powered lights and solar panels.

What can be considered as the most often used solar cell today is what we call the Photovoltaic Cell which works by converting its protons into a form that produces electricity: electrons. The said solar cell can quickly transform sunlight into electricity. This kind of cell is normally found in solar panels that are placed on top of the roof since they need to conduct light from the sun then transform that light into electricity. The roof is the best place to put those panels so that sunlight can reach them well.

More and more people are now making homemade solar cells which lead to the production of solar power. Through the use of solar power, money may be saved; at the same time, people may be able to conserve the diminishing supply of fossil fuels.

Product Description
CONTENTS (Abridged, Kindle Edition) Preface Introduction 1. Solar Energy in the United States. 2. Solar Power in Residential and Commercial Units. 3. A Simple Math for the Solarification of Your Home and Your Workplace. 4. Science and Technology of the Solar Cells. 5. Trapping the Einstein Photons by the Alferov Semiconductor Heterostructures. Index Glossary References and Comments… More >>

The Solar Cell Power in Your Home and Your Workplace: All You Need to Know

During 2008, we noticed the consequences of worldwide increased in oil prices, on local petrol prices. The prices of Oil are still increasing and it is getting more and more difficult for automobile owners to refill their vehicles. Even every household is having tough time in covering their expenses. Among these expenses, electricity bill has become one of the most high-priced expenditure now. This is because, most electricity producers use oil to produce electricity. Therefore, the rising prices of oil have led to the increasing cost of electricity. In this critical situation, our only savior is the homemade solar cells. We can reduce our electricity cost by using solar cell power restorable energy with the help of home-produce solar cells. If you are interested in homemade solar cells than this article can help you to get the picture of what this is all about.

For now, it is comparatively still costly to set up a ready-made residential solar power system. The cost of installing this system can take many years to recover. To use the solar power we need to have home-based solar cells. The concept is something like this: Solar cells, also know as Photovoltaic, is attached together in a sequence to make a solar array. The idea behind this is to use solar array to collect solar energy and change it into usable electrical energy. After building the solar array, you have to connect it to the charge controller. A Charge controller is a device that allows you to control the quantity of electricity transferred to the batteries. The batteries are used to stockpile the DC electricity (Direct Current). Then, we will use inverter to convert DC into AC (Alternate Current), as most of the home appliances use AC electricity.

Thanks to the homemade solar cells, we can now use solar cell power to light our house and enjoy an uninterrupted supply of electricity. To use the solar power system properly, it is advised to grab a home solar power guide now.

Want to lower your electricity bill? Would you like to know about building your own home solar panel for less than $300? Then start a DIY (Do-It-Yourself) project, grab a complete instruction guide and start making your own solar array now. Utilize the energy from the sun for free.