Residential Installation

Residential Solar Power Systems are cost-effective and offer a good return on investment. Solar Power for a residential home creates an environment of clean and sustainable energy. These systems can be connected to the grid to possibly sell electricity back to the power company.

Residential Solar panels work off of photovoltaic principles inherent in most semiconductors. In photovoltaic energy transfer, sunlight strikes the surface of a crystallized semiconductor. The one used in commercially sold panels is silicon. When the light strikes the crystal, it causes the crystal to emit an electric current. The crystals are backed by wiring to channel the current, and a series of panels can be set up as an array to further boost the amount of current they produce.

There are several varieties of panels available on the market. The most common is a third-generation silicon crystal panel. These panels are efficient enough to pay for their purchase price in 3 to 5 years of power production. In the engineered lifetime of a solar panel, this means you are essentially getting 20 to 30 years of free power. A newly emerging technology is the thin-film solar array. This new technology allows solar panels to be made utilizing much less material than is needed for traditional methods. While they are less efficient currently than the more established crystal arrays, they also don't need to produce nearly as much power to meet their production costs.

Regardless of what type of panel you decide to go with, odds are you will want to hook your solar array into the existing power grid. Legislation has mandated that in many areas, the power company must buy excess power that you generate. Commonly known as net-metering, it means that you could potentially be receiving a check from the power company, rather than writing one.