Solar Panels: Sources, Installation, Technology Introduction

So now, that you may have decided to put up the solar panels for your home use or office use to conserve electricty and heat and go for efficent energy usage, there are other options available too. Say you may not like to invest in using solar energy, but you may like to benefit from that technology. You can then consider investing in the Alternative Energy Mutual Funds which cover areas like Solar Power, Wind Power, biomass, Geothermal sources, etc. Then, here is the article about the Recent Performance of the various alternative energy segments Or say, you still want to stick to the traditional fossil fuels, then you may like to consider Taking a Crude Oil Futures Position

Solar Cells, Solar Panels or Solar Energy Boards, all the terms lead to the same set of devices - those used to connvert solar energy into usable heat energy or electricty. In this article, we discuss the following:
How Solar Panels can be installed, Types of Solar Panels, How Solar Energy be converted to Heat or Electricity, How can Solar Panels be used for home applicances or residential solar power, etc.

Now, as per Wiki, the term "Solar panel" can be used to describe two types of devices that collect energy from the sun and transform it to usable heat energy or electricity:

-- Solar photovoltaic modules use solar cells to convert light from the sun into electricity.
A Solar Panel, photovoltaic module or photovoltaic panel is basically a pack of interconnected photovoltaic cells, or solar cells. You can also have interconnected photovoltaic panels which can be called be a photovoltaic array. Since most of the material used here is metallic, it requires protection from corrosion through proper packaging and glass covering. To focus the high intensity of solar power at designated areas or points, lenses are used. Another design concept is to split the light into different wavelength ranges and direct the beams onto different cells tuned to the appropriate wavelength ranges. This is expected to raise the energy efficiency to 50%. Sunlight conversion rates can be in the range from 5-20% in commercial production (solar panels), that can be lower than cell conversion.
The basic idea of solar panel on Photovoltaic solar panel is to take the Solar energy and convert it to heat or electrical energy.

-- Solar thermal collectors use the sun's energy to heat water or another fluid such as oil or antifreeze.
Then, we have the Solar thermal collectors which are widely used for heating water or other liquid. Known as one of the most energy efficient Systems, this installation is quite common in Western Countries. Basically, you can have various shares of themal collectors, like
* Flat plate
* Evacuated tube
* Pool or unglazed
* Air
* Box type
* Parabolic trough
* Parabolic dish
* Power tower
* Solar pyramids
* Volumetric thermal collectors

They do the same task of converting the solar energy into heat energy. They come with advantages of reaching upto high temperatures, Excellent Energy Efficiency, Comparatively cheaper than the photovoltaic solar cells, will take less space by efficient use of mirrors, and can be used for energy trasmission to far points through the use of optical fibre networks