PV Gap

Jessie Said:

What is your definition of SOLAR POWER and ELECTRICITY?

We Answered:

Solar power - may be captured by solar cells to generate electricity. May be used to heat water for thermal exchange or general heating. May be captured BY PLANTS to convert sunlight and carbon dioxide into useable biomass, plant fibers, food, etc.

Electricity is anything that will push electrons around to power electrical devices. Solar-electric panels capture sunlight to generate direct electrical current.

The real downside is that solar panels are not very efficient at converting sunlight to electricity. Also, they only work in the daytime and don't work well on a cloudy or rainy day.

I have solar panels at my place. It will be many years before the electrical savings offsets the cost of installing them.

Alma Said:

How can I make my own solar panel and produce solar power electricity and green energy?

We Answered:

here's some useful info about solar panels, hope it helps.

http://www.renewables-info.com/renewable…

Paula Said:

how much would it cost to produce 10% of schools electricity by solar power?

We Answered:

Why not natural sun light piped in through the reflective "solar Tube" devices and plastic/ glass "light pipes" Zero sustaining energy and the "government" could use soldiers to manufacture them instead of sending them to be blown up...LIVINGRY instead of KILLINGRY... read BF Fuller

Katherine Said:

How can I produce a 60-70 kilowatts electricity from solar power? if yes, how can I do it?

We Answered:

First get out your calculator. Looking at a little panel (just under 9 inches square) at
http://www.batterystuff.com/solar-charge…

this will give out 5 watts. For 60 kW, you will need 60000 / 5 = 12000 of these, covering an area of 6750 square feet or 750 square yards. Not many people have a roof that size facing the sun. Perhaps you mean 60 kilowatt-hours through the day. Then, of course, the sun is up for only part of the day, so you will have perhaps 8 hours to generate the daily requirement at 60000 / 8 = 7500 watt output, needing an area of only 840 square feet, still big but now manageable. You need to generate more than you need in the daytime to store some of the electricity for night-time use. The only practical form of storage is batteries. A big car battery is rated at 12V 100 ampere-hours, equivalent to 1.2 kWhr, so you will need about 40 of those for your evening and night consumption. After that you need an inverter, which turns the DC produced by the solar panels and stored by the batteries into AC mains voltage to power all your domestic equipment. The inverter is not 100% efficient and the sun is often obscured by cloud and rain, so you might start by doubling all these dimensions. This is going to be a very expensive exercise.

Jeff Said:

What is the name of the windows (for a house) that change color or tint level with electricity or solar power?

We Answered:

Switchable glazings (sometimes called "smart windows") can change properties such as shading coefficients (the amount of solar heat gain allowed) or visible transmittance (amount of visible light that passes through a window) in response to an electric current or to the changing environmental conditions themselves.
There are only a few manufacturers that offer these technologies now (Sage Electrochromics at www.sage-ec.com and SPD Technologies at www.infinitint.com)

Christopher Said:

How does solar power make electricity?

We Answered:

1.The solar gets the sun's rays
2.Heat is produced,inside the house there are pipe lines where the water is
3.Due to theheat coming from the sun it also heats up and creates steam(Steam is ahot wind)
4.The steam rotates the generator's turbines giving electricity