How many solar?
Question:
Answer:
a quick article to look at.
http://home.howstuffworks.com/question41...
before you ask how many solar cells you need you first must identify your usage of electricity== where do you need it. then you can figure out how much you need.
a huge question is what will you be using the electricity for!
if the house is underground you probably wont need diddly for airconditioning. that means less cells. you can use a propane refrigerator, again less cells. florescent lights reduce need even more.
if you use natural gas or propane for heating, water heater, stove and oven - (well you get the idea) for each item you either eliminate as unnecessary or can use other energy sources the fewer cells will be needed to accomidate your house.
personally i would look into also utilizing other energy sources in addtion to the solar - depending on your home site there are lots of possibilities
you can use biofuels, water power, wind power and more- i think the mistake a lot of people make is limiting themselves to only one energy source
good luck
rj
hope the articles help and mother earth news is only one source of info (tho its one of the best)
One, if it's big enough.
Two, it depends on how much electricity you consume
Three, it depends on how much sunlight you get and how consistently
Completely power? Not just bring the water temperature up, so you use less energy to get hot water and so on?
You want completely power it? Heat, electricity, etc.?
Well, depends on your energy requirements. Do you have several TV sets, a couple of refrigerators, air conditioner and so on?
You'll need to cover a square mile with sells to POWER everything.
You should already know the answer to this question. You need to know how much energy is required to run a house that size. If you are going to run the house on solar energy then you need to add up the total consumption of what you intend to run at the same time.
For one , you can't run refrigeration on solar power you need to go to gas to run that. That is if you really want to go solely on solar power.
I intend to run my house on alternative power and am still learning on what it takes to do this.
Straight answer to the question is it all depends on where you are in the world and how much equipment you want to power. There is no straightforward mathematical answer as you cant accurately predict the days of sunshine, you can only estimate. You can actually power anything from solar energy if you use the right technology but generally speaking it does not make technical nor economic sense to try. We live quite close to the largest solar power tower in the world which provides electricity into the grid. Obviously it doesnt function every day but it does store enough heat (pressurised steam) during the hours of sun to generate electricity throughout the night. At the domestic level it makes complete sense to have your own solar water heating panel for your hot water but it doesnt make sense to try and generate all your own power. Much better to push the utilities and have a regional network of wind, solar and other renewable energies all feeding into the public electricity grid system. And it doesnt make good environmental sense to switch to gas for things like air con and fridges as this is fossil carbon. Best solution is to use electricity from grid which is produced by renewable technologies. Here in Spain we are making huge contributions and switching from fossil fuels to wind and solar.
you can also check for some energy saving tips
More Questions & Answers...