Home solar panels are ideal for lighting up your house and garden. With the energy saved in rechargeable batteries during the day, you can provide your entire house with proper lighting throughout the night.
There are different solar panels you can use for your solar power generator. There are monocrystalline panels, polycrystalline panels and ribbon panels. Polycrystalline panels are most commonly used. This is because compared to monocrystalline cells, they are more cost-effective. Even though monocrystalline solar cells give more yield, they leave gaps at all four corners. Therefore they are not able to provide a lot more power per square feet. Thus the power output per area is effectively the same for monocrystalline and polycrystalline PV panels. Needless to say, many homeowners choose polycrystalline solar cells over monocrystalline cells.
For ribbon-type solar cells, although they are much cheaper than the other 2 types of PV panels, they are pretty ineffective in comparison. When it comes to installing PV panels on your roof, space management is critical. For many homes, using ribbon-type solar panels just does not work out.
There are also many different types of rechargeable batteries you can use. What solar experts recommend is to use deep-cycle maintenance-free rechargeable batteries. An example of this is the Concorde SunXtender. Deep-cycle batteries are well suited for applications that consume a lot of power. However if you only intend to use it to power LED lights, almost any rechargeable battery will do, provided it is of the correct specification. LED lights do not use much energy and do not require a lot of energy to start-up.
Ideally, light emitting diodes and energy-saving bulbs should be used for solar lights. Incandescent lamps and halogen bulbs consume lots of power and drain energy unnecessarily from the batteries. Even though LED lamps are a little more expensive now, the price will go down in the near future. This is because super bright LEDs are used in many more places than before and they are now in massive production. With economy of scale, its price is set to slide. Yet even if it does not, it is still cost-effective to buy LED lamps. This is because they last longer and use less electricity. So you can save money every year on energy.
When you use home solar panels to light up your house and garden, you use less fossil fuel. As such, you are helping the Earth by releasing less greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. If every household can illuminate their home using solar energy, many environmental issues will not be as serious as they are today.
