You’re probably concerned about energy; we all are. Whether you’re worried about the rising costs of supplying energy to your home or you’d rather reduce your home’s carbon footprint, all of us would like to reduce our energy usage. Solar power is one option available to homeowners; and thanks to increasingly sophisticated and affordable solar panels, kits and other equipment, it is an option which is within reach for most people. In fact, you may even be able to install your own solar power system using a kit and save a great deal of money on the cost of installing the system.

Solar power is a clean and renewable source of energy which produces no pollution and depending on your location, the amount of space you have available to install solar panels and your budget, can either greatly reduce your energy bills or even replace your dependence on your local utility entirely! In some cases, you can also sell unused power back to your local utility company, which helps to further defray the expense of installing solar panels on your home.

To get started, you’ll need solar panels, obviously, as well as some hardware for mounting them (most people choose to place their solar panels on their roof, preferably in a place where they’ll receive as much full sunlight as possible). You’ll also need a transformer to convert the direct current produced by your solar power system into alternating current which you can use to power your home. You’ll probably also want batteries in order to store the surplus energy you produce on sunnier days so that you can use it later.

Will your solar panels be able to supply your home with all of the electrical power it needs? That all depends. Your location, the direction your home faces and the size and number of solar panels you install on your home all make a difference. Also factoring in is the efficiency of the solar panels you use; you should check this rating with the manufacturer – the higher the efficiency of your solar panels, the more energy you’ll be able to produce from the sunlight they receive.

There are some downsides to using solar panels to supply your home with electricity. Naturally, you won’t be able to generate solar power at night and the amount of electricity you’ll produce will be significantly lower on overcast days, though your solar panels will still absorb some solar energy even on the cloudiest of days. However, having an adequate battery storage system should be able to help you to store enough power for those cloudy days.

While solar panels may or may not be able to completely eliminate the need to purchase electricity from your local utility company, using solar panel in your home can greatly reduce your energy costs, reduce your home’s environmental impact and more than pay for itself over the life of your home solar power system through selling surplus energy to your local utility.

If you are interested in how I started out building my own solar panels for my home – read my post here: How I built my own solar panels.

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