Different ways to add solar to your home

💡 TL;DR

1. Adoption to solar energy can happen at two levels;
   1. Power grid level
   2. House application level
2. Ways to add solar to our homes-
   1. Use solar appliances that trap solar heat such as solar water heaters, solar cookers and dryers while solar-run watches, calculators, ventilator fans, outdoor lighting are popular examples.
   2. Install solar on your roof, your power bills will massively reduce because you need to draw less electricity from the grid
   3. Instead of installing panels, residents could reserve solar over the internet and link them to their power account to get offsets on their electricity bills.
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The requirement for energy is ever-growing and this makes it more critical to add more sustainable and zero-carbon power sources into our energy mix. As the world shifts towards renewable energy, due to its financial and operational viability, solar energy via photovoltaics has found itself positioned as a leading solution.

Accelerating this adoption has to happen at two levels;

1. At a larger, power-grid level: lowering the carbon emission level at a macro scale enable more clean power to reach everywhere while also lowering the carbon impact across the lifecycle of our electric vehicles and other applications.
2. At a local, house application level: Being able to generate clean energy at home reduces the wastage of power in transmission losses (when power is delivered over large distances) as well as minimizes our dependence on a grid. Furthermore, being able to generate power locally benefits both the individual financially and the community at large.

Expanding on the latter, here are three main ways we can add solar to our homes →

1. Solar Appliances:

   These take shape in two ways; either by channeling naturally available solar heat for heating appliances, or by embedding small photovoltaic cells into them to drive motion or light things up.

   Common examples of appliances that trap solar heat are solar water heaters, solar cookers and dryers while solar-run watches, calculators, ventilator fans, outdoor lighting are popular examples of embedded appliances. Since these solar cells can take up any shape, virtually any equipment can have embedded solar, from vehicles to window stills. There’s even these cool headphones which draw power from ambient light available.

2. Rooftop Solar Installations

   While the photovoltaic panels that are installed on rooftops can come in different kinds, they are put together basically in the same way; with arrays of solar cells (the same ones found in the embedded appliances discussed above) strung together to produce much larger power output. With solar on your roof, your power bills are massively reduced because you need to draw less electricity from the grid. The price of power from the grid is predicted to rise within the coming years, and with a linear power warranty of 20-25 years, you can expect long-term cost savings from skipping on the pricy electricity from the grid.

   Also if you add energy storage to the mix through batteries, your rooftop panels could keep you operational even during long blackouts and further increase the value out of your system.

3. Community Solar

   While solar is a great addition into our lives, there is a catch; One constraint with solar panels is that being a surface phenomenon, they take up quite a lot of space to install reasonably usable capacity. Not many of us has space to install panels on rooftops or open space to use an solar appliance, especially for those who live as tenants or don’t have shade-free roofspace. This has led to many community solar or shared solar projects pop up all over the globe; where the solar panels could be elsewhere and residents could connect the power from the panels to their homes.

   However in India community solar hasn’t seen realistic implementations mostly due to grid limitations and regulatory constraint.

   

   This is where digital solar comes into play; instead of installing panels, residents could reserve solar over the internet and link them to their power account to get offsets on their electricity bills, and is accessible for users across most parts of the country. This makes going solar, fast and hassle-free, but more fundamentally, gives everyone the opportunity to participate in the energy transition.