How does solar photovoltaic tie into your house?
This question was asked last week in another discussion, and really deserves it's own discussion thread.
The most common way for a modern solar photovoltaic system to work is that technically, it does not tie into your house at all!! You mount the panels on your rooftop or onto racks, and then the power that is generated is fed directly to the power company. If you are lucky, you can be part of a "clean green" energy program, and the utility will pay a premium for the power. Right now, TVA is still paying the premium. But Georgia Power has met their quota and just buys power at the going rate. So, if you sell power to TVA, you will get some 2 to 3 times back per kilowatt that you sell to them versus the price you pay for electricity.
The advantage of using this method is that if your system is producing more power than you need at a given time, you do not have to buy and maintain an expensive battery system to prevent the power from being lost. In essence, your electric utility is serving as a battery system for you. You generate the power, transmit it to them, and then use it as you demand.
If you want to be "off the grid" or if you want to install solar at a location where there is not power lines or a meter, then you can either install batteries or not. If you wanted to power a piece of equipment (say a refrigerator) so that it can run both day and night, then you would design the system so that the batteries can store an adequate amount of power to keep the application going. We have a security gate that uses solar power and a battery to keep the equipment available to run day or night - the batteries store enough power so that it can go several days without sunshine. If you were to have such an application to power your home, the solar system would be tied into your breaker box.
If you do not install batteries, then any excess power your panels generate at a given moment is lost.
But there are still applications where it makes sense to do this. An example of this would be a system to pump water from a pond to a storage tank that would be used to water a lawn. It would run during the day when the sun is shining, and if there are several days of rain and no sunshine, the system would not run -- but that's okay because the rain would water the lawn. Sunny Solar recently designed such a system, and it will be installed soon.
The most common way for a modern solar photovoltaic system to work is that technically, it does not tie into your house at all!! You mount the panels on your rooftop or onto racks, and then the power that is generated is fed directly to the power company. If you are lucky, you can be part of a "clean green" energy program, and the utility will pay a premium for the power. Right now, TVA is still paying the premium. But Georgia Power has met their quota and just buys power at the going rate. So, if you sell power to TVA, you will get some 2 to 3 times back per kilowatt that you sell to them versus the price you pay for electricity.
The advantage of using this method is that if your system is producing more power than you need at a given time, you do not have to buy and maintain an expensive battery system to prevent the power from being lost. In essence, your electric utility is serving as a battery system for you. You generate the power, transmit it to them, and then use it as you demand.
If you want to be "off the grid" or if you want to install solar at a location where there is not power lines or a meter, then you can either install batteries or not. If you wanted to power a piece of equipment (say a refrigerator) so that it can run both day and night, then you would design the system so that the batteries can store an adequate amount of power to keep the application going. We have a security gate that uses solar power and a battery to keep the equipment available to run day or night - the batteries store enough power so that it can go several days without sunshine. If you were to have such an application to power your home, the solar system would be tied into your breaker box.
If you do not install batteries, then any excess power your panels generate at a given moment is lost.
But there are still applications where it makes sense to do this. An example of this would be a system to pump water from a pond to a storage tank that would be used to water a lawn. It would run during the day when the sun is shining, and if there are several days of rain and no sunshine, the system would not run -- but that's okay because the rain would water the lawn. Sunny Solar recently designed such a system, and it will be installed soon.
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Permalink Reply by Collier Construction on -
This is helpful, very helpful. Thanks!
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