What You Will Need for Installing Your Home Solar Power Systems

Here you will learn the essential things you need for installing your home solar power systems successfully.

Inevitably a ladder is required if you are planning to mount the solar array on a roof. A camera can also be extremely useful for photographing the site.

I also find it useful to find some large, old cardboard boxes, open them out and, with knife and tape, cut them into the rough size of your proposed solar array. This can help you when finding a location for your solar array. It is far easier to envisage what the installation will look like and it can help highlight any installation issues that you would otherwise have missed.

If you’ve never done a solar site survey before, it does help if you visit the site on a sunny day. Once you have some more experience with doing solar site surveys you’ll find it doesn’t actually make much difference whether you do your site survey on a sunny day or an overcast day: part of the site survey is to manually plot the sun’s position across the sky, so sunny whether actually makes little difference to the quality of the survey.

When you first arrive on the site, the first thing to check is that the layout of the site gives it access to sunlight.

We’ll use a more scientific approach for checking for shade later, but a quick look first often highlights problems without needing to carry out a more in-depth survey.

Look from east, through south and to the west to ensure there are no obvious obstructions that can block the sunshine.

(Incidentally, this assumes you are in the Northern Hemisphere. If you are in the Southern Hemisphere, you need to check east, through north to west. From the equator, the sun passes overhead and so only the east and west are important).

Look around the site and see if there are better places than others for positioning an array. If you are considering mounting your solar array on a roof, remember that the world looks a very different place from a roof-top, and obstructions that are a problem standing on the ground look very different when you are at roof height.

Learning how to build a solar panel isn't really a difficult task only if you get the required materials right.

Useful information home solar power systems:
http://www.greenearth4energy.com/solar-panel-systems.html