Solar power is the key to a clean energy future. Every day, the sun gives off far more energy than we need to power everything on earth. That’s why we’re investing heavily in solar plants and why we are now offering solar kits to our customers in Australia.

Solar Power for Homes

Solar power saves you money. As utility costs continue to rise, solar panel efficiency is higher than ever.  There’s nothing like watching your meter spin backward and knowing that you are realizing savings. With solar panels from GREENWAVE  SOLAR, the benefits keep stacking up. The future has never been brighter.

Solar power is usable energy generated from the sun in the form of electric or thermal energy. Solar energy is captured in a variety of ways, the most common of which is with photovoltaic solar panels that convert the sun’s rays into usable electricity. Aside from using photovoltaics to generate electricity, solar energy is commonly used in thermal applications to heat indoor spaces or fluids. Residential and commercial property owners can install solar hot water systems and design their buildings with passive solar heating in mind to fully take advantage of the sun’s energy with solar technology.  Solar power is a renewable resource, which means there’s so much of it freely available we never have to dig for coal or refine other toxic energy sources just to keep the lights on.

How does solar energy work?

A solar panel (also known as a solar module) has of a layer of silicon cells, a metal frame, a glass casing unit, and wiring to transfer electric current from the silicon. Silicon is a nonmetal with conductive properties that allow it to absorb and convert sunlight into usable electricity. When light hits a silicon cell, the light causes electrons in the silicon to be set in motion, providing a flow of electric current. This is known as the “photovoltaic effect,” and it describes the general functionality of solar panel tech.

Generating electricity with solar panels boils down to this photovoltaic effect. It was first discovered in 1839 by Edmond Becquerel and can be thought of as a property of specific materials (known as semiconductors) that allows them to create an electric current when they are exposed to sunlight.

The photovoltaic process works through the following broad steps:

1. The silicon photovoltaic solar cell absorbs solar radiation
2. When the sun’s rays interact with the silicon cell, electrons begin to move, creating a flow of electric current
3. Wires capture and feed this direct current (DC) electricity to a solar inverter to be converted to alternating current (AC) electricity.

Solar energy is a clean, inexpensive, renewable power source that is harnessable nearly everywhere in the world – any point where sunlight hits the surface of the earth is a potential location to generate solar power. And since solar energy comes from the sun, it represents a limitless source of power. Renewable energy technologies generate electricity from resources that are infinite. Compare, for instance, producing electricity with renewable resources to doing so with fossil fuels. It took hundreds of thousands of years for oil, gas and coal to form, so every time one of those resources are burned to create electricity, that finite resource is moved marginally closer to depletion. Using a renewable resource – such as wind, solar and hydropower – to generate electricity, does not deplete that resource. There will always be consistent sunlight shining on Earth’s surface, and after turning sunlight into electricity, there is still an infinite amount of sunlight to turn into electricity in the future. That is what makes solar power, by nature, renewable energy.