If you plan to go solar, you need to know the benefits of solar power before installing a solar panel system on your rooftop that will generate clean electricity and reduce your energy bills and the carbon footprint of your home.
What is a Solar PV System?
A solar PV (photovoltaic) system installed on the rooftop of your house or in the yard will generate clean electricity during the day and will help you to reduce the level of greenhouse gas emissions released by your house, and at the same time will reduce your dependence on fossil fuels.
Producing electricity in the conventional way requires fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas to be burned, which generates electricity, but also a large amount of greenhouse gas emissions.
By choosing solar panels to power your home, you can decrease your carbon footprint by up to 80%.
A solar PV (photovoltaic) system has a carbon footprint per unit of energy production by 95% lower than a power station burning fossil fuels.
Solar panels can only generate greenhouse gas emissions at the factory in the manufacturing process, the trucks used to transport the panels from the factory to the company that will install the system and from there to your home can also release greenhouse gas emissions, and the tools used by workers to install the solar PV system on your rooftop can also release some harmful emissions into the atmosphere.
After installation, a solar PV system is not polluting the environment
However, after installing the solar PV system on your rooftop or in the yard, the panels will only produce clean electricity during the day without releasing harmful emissions, which will help the environment and also your wallet.
If you only want to produce hot water for free using the Sun’s power you can install a solar water heater (SWH) on your rooftop and the device will use the sunlight to heat water using a solar thermal collector.
Another way to produce solar thermal energy is to concentrate hundreds or even thousands of large mirrors towards a small recipient installed at the top of a tower.
The small recipient heated by the mirrors contains a working fluid (molted salt) that will be used to generate steam, which will rotate a turbine to produce clean electricity.
These are the main ways to use the sunlight to generate clean electricity and hot water.
Solar energy pros and cons will show you what are the benefits and the drawbacks of using the power of the Sun with the current technology.
Benefits of Solar Power
The Sun is the main source of light, heat and energy on the planet, which means that we need to know the pros and cons of use all these advantages in our benefit to save money on energy bills and keep the environment cleaner.
1. Solar Energy Can Reduce Our Dependence on Fossil Fuels
Installing a solar panel system on your rooftop or in the yard will give you the opportunity to generate your own free and clean energy during the day.
If you want to use the clean energy produced by your solar panels during the night you need to store it in a solar battery system that will allow you to use the energy when you want.
Storing solar or wind power using a battery system is very welcome because these sources of renewable energy are known as intermittent sources of power.
SolarGearSupply.com is an online retailer that provides a wide range of solar batteries for the U.S. customers.
A battery system for solar power will allow you to use the clean electricity produced by your solar panels during the night or in the rainy days.
However, if the cloudy days will take more than a week, you need to rely again on the energy provided by the grid.
Having your own “power station” on your rooftop or in the yard will allow you to consume less energy from the grid, and will reduce our reliance on conventional energy produced by burning fossil fuels.
2. Solar Power Can Reduce the Level of Air Pollution on the Planet
Mankind burns today a large quantity of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and natural gas in power stations to generate electricity on a mass scale.
Generating electricity from fossil fuels releases huge amounts of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, which is responsible for about 30% of the U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.
Switching to solar will reduce the level of air pollution produced by your house because you will use more clean energy and less energy provided by the grid.
More than that, if you produce more energy than you need, the excess energy will be sent in the grid to power the neighbors with clean power.
This will reduce the level of air pollution in the world even more.
3. Solar Energy Improves Public Health
The massive use of fossil fuels for energy and heat generation on the planet and also the massive use of vehicles with combustion engines for transportation keeps the level of air pollution on planet Earth at very high levels, especially in the crowded areas (large cities).
Air pollution is responsible for many casualties among the population due to the numerous allergies and diseases (respiratory and cardiovascular) produced.
As a proof that air pollution is responsible for the occurrence of these respiratory and cardiovascular diseases among the population, is the fact that the incidence of these medical issues is higher in the most industrialized countries.
The high level of greenhouse gas emissions generated by burning fossil fuels to produce electricity and heat and to run our cars is responsible for the high level of air pollution felt the most in the very crowded areas (mostly caused by the presence of a large number of vehicles in cities).
Increasing the capacity to generate solar and wind power on the planet will reduce the consumption of fossil fuels and will improve the quality of the air, which will reduce the number of medical issues created by air pollution among the population.
4. Solar Energy Is a Protector of the Natural Resources of the Planet
Solar panels are not harming the environment or the natural resources of the planet in either way, but the mining process destroys forests and soil, while the extraction process of fossil fuels such as oil and shale gas (hydraulic fracturing) contaminates the underground water with dangerous chemicals and destroys the underground rock, which causes quakes around the area of the extraction field.
A coal-fired power station will not only pollute the air on a massive scale (produces smog), but will pollute the soil around the station and even the water supply.
Only the people living close to a coal-fired power station or close to an extraction point can be aware of the fact of how harmful can be these facilities when we talk about the environment and the quality of their life.
5. Solar Energy is Produced Even During Droughts or Heat Waves
Any nuclear, natural gas or coal-fired power plant relies on large quantities of water for cooling, but a solar farm doesn’t need water to produce clean electricity.
A solar panel system requires only the presence of the sunlight to generate clean power and will work all year long (less energy is produced during the winter).
You may use water only to clean the panels from time to time if the rain is not doing it itself.
This way, a solar panel system or a solar farm will work well even during drought periods, and during heat waves it will work at full capacity generating the most amount of clean energy.
6. Solar Power Creates New Jobs in the Sector
The large number of factories manufacturing solar panels on the planet has managed to drop the price of solar pretty low, which made solar power more popular than ever among people and large companies.
Solar power continues to be the fastest-growing renewable energy source on the planet, which means that provides every year new jobs for thousands of workers involved in manufacturing, sales and installation of solar panel systems in the U.S.
7. Solar Power Provides Long Term Savings
The initial investment when installing a solar panel system on your rooftop or in the yard might be high even if you receive help from the government under the form of incentives.
However, a solar PV system will produce clean and free energy for at least two decades, which means that you can make important savings year after year.
It is better to pay monthly for the solar PV system installed at home instead of paying monthly energy bills sent by your utility company.
If you choose a larger PV system, you can cover all your energy needs using solar energy, and you can even receive money from the utility company by sending the excess power produced by your panels back in the grid.
8. Solar PV Systems Require Low Maintenance
Solar PV (photovoltaic) systems require very low maintenance because the panels are built to work without problems for at least two decades, and in some cases even more.
Once installed in the yard or on your rooftop, your solar power system will generate clean electricity during the day.
During the winter the solar PV system will generate a smaller amount of energy, but during the summer will generate much cleaner energy (longer days and more sunny days during the summer).
During the fall, your panels might be covered by the fallen leaves of the trees, and you need to clean them to allow the system to generate clean energy without any breaks.
If the panels are covered by snow during the winter, you need to clean them in order to allow them to generate clean energy again.
If you are waiting for the sun to do the job, you will lose a good amount of free energy, which could have been produced by your panels.
9. Solar Energy Creates Energy Independence For the Homeowner
By installing a solar PV system at home you can say that you have a small power station at your will that generates clean electricity during the day.
If you have a battery system you can store the excess energy produced by the panels for later use, which means that the solar PV system creates energy independence for you and your family.
The energy produced by the solar modules can be used to power a chicken coop heater without consuming energy from the grid.
If the solar PV system installed at home is big enough, you can generate enough energy to power your home and you can also send the excess energy into the grid to power your neighbors with clean energy.
10. Solar Energy Can Power the Entire Planet with Free and Clean Electricity
The Sun has a huge potential to generate clean power for our needs here on the planet, but in order to replace the fossil fuels with solar energy,. we need to massively develop the generation capacity for solar power.
Today, we are already using solar energy to power the planet, but the share of the solar power in the energy mix of the planet is still very tiny.
In the following decades, solar power and all the other renewable energy sources available on the planet will significantly increase their share in the energy mix of all the countries, which means that fossil fuels will slowly vanish from the world’s energy mix, and this way the environment will become much cleaner.
Conclusion
The actual trend towards the development of the renewable energy sources and electric cars shows that solar power along with the other alternative energy sources available on planet Earth will become the main sources of power for mankind in a not so far future.