Looking at a solar panel diagram can often be a great learning shortcut.
It can help you to understand how solar power works in a much more direct way than just hearing about it.
After all, you can only listen to an explanation of volts, watts, inverters, and solar cells so many times before it all starts to sound the same.
A solar panel picture can break the monotony and give your eyes a chance to look at what your ears are tired of hearing about.
So we're going to give your ears a break.
On this page we're going to add any relevant solar diagrams we can find and provide a brief breakdown of what is going on in each diagram.
We'll start out with a simple diagram that shows the basic building blocks of a solar array.
What we see is that solar cells are the building blocks of a solar module (also known as a 'solar panel'), and when you put more than one solar panel together you get a solar array.
When sunlight hits a solar cell, energy is absorbed by the cell's semiconductor material (usually silicon).
This energy knocks electrons loose and causes them to move freely. The electrons are then forced to flow in a certain direction, creating a current which can be used to power an external device.
Of course, this is a simplified version of how a solar panel works and we can see in this next diagram that a solar panel is actually made up of many parts.
When we have enough solar cells for a solar module, and enough solar modules for a solar array, we are almost ready for a residential solar installation.
As we can see from this diagram, however, there are a few more pieces of the solar puzzle that we will require for a solar installation.
One of these solar puzzle pieces is a solar power inverter. This is the device that takes DC power from your solar panels and turns it into the AC power that can be used by your home appliances.
We also see an electric meter in our residential solar diagram. This allows 'net metering' to take place. In a net metering situation, people are able to sell back to their utility company the excess electricity produced by their solar panel installation.
The special electric meter in a grid connected system is able to 'run backwards' so the electricity fed back to the electric grid can be measured.
We will keep an eye out for any additional solar panel diagram that could help provide a better understanding of solar power and how it works.
