1. The sun's heat is harvested. This is usually done by heating a liquid. For home owners, the sun's heat can be used to heat your hot water by circulating it through a solar panel on your roof.
2. The sun's energy is harvested and turned into electricity. This works equally well in hot climates as cold - you just need sunlight. Traditionally, silicon panels are used. There is a molecular reaction when photons (think of these as parcels of sun energy) strike the panels. This sets of a flow of electrons = electricity.
Solar energy can be stored:
a) Storing the heat ie. hot water, by keeping it in an insulated container
b) When storing electricity, you can store this in batteries.
Distributed:
a) For hot water, by connecting this to your house plumbing
b) For electricity, by connecting to your home's electricity system. You can also connect your solar electricity to the grid - this is known as net metering.
With net metering, you can sell solar energy back to the grid. (this is when you can watch your electricity meter run backwards.)
Priced:
this depends on
a) The price of the solar panel system
b) Your power bills - ie. how much power you can save if you used solar energy instead
c) How much sun is available where you live.
Hope this answers your question :)
There is a step-by-step video guide online right now that can show you how to reduce your power bill by making your own solar panels.
Take a look at it: http://tinyurl.com/Earth4EnergyRew
Why pay thousands of dollars for solar energy ($27,000 average cost) when you can build your own solar panel system for just a fraction of the retail cost. You can build a single solar panel or you can build an entire array of panels to power your whole house.
Some people are saving 50% on their power bill, some people are reducing their bill to nothing. But what’s most impressive is that just by following these instructions some are even making the power company pay them!
If you are referring to energy from solar panels, it is either stored in a battery or sent back over the grid to the utility company & stored there.
To add to Sam's answer, some applications use air warmed by the solar panels and circulated around something that retains the heat, like a big pile of rocks.
Solar energy collected by photosynthesis combines the carbon from CO2 and the hydrogen from water into hydrocarbons in the form of simple sugars. Most of this is used by the plants for energy, some are stored and some form cellulose of which the plants are made, in the cycle of life and death, these hydrocarbons are recycled as nutrients for other plants and creatures but a small amount gets buried and after millions of years, these are gathered in fossil reserves by geologic forces.
Yes, most of the solar energy we use are chemically stored solar energy collected by photosynthesis millions of years ago.
Our feeble attempts to collect and store solar energy ourselves without nature's help includes storing them in batteries, as thermal energy in insulated tanks, as thermal energy in phase changes such as melted wax, in pumping water to reservoirs at higher elevations to be reclaimed by micro-hydro, and by pumping compressed air into caverns to later drive turbines. A popular technique for home solar energy storage is to sell it to the grid where other people can use it then buy it back when you need it from the grid, effectively storing the energy via accounting. There are efforts now to mimic nature by storing the energy in hydrocarbons made from CO2 and H2O.
I have a solar panel system installed by a team called cotterill civils from birmingham, the midlands. If you need understand more about it, i would see there site as it has an informational
Hi globehead. You should choose me for the best answer.
