The benefits of having solar panels installed in your home is well known, but few people understand the way that solar panels work. It won’t make much difference to your daily life to understand photovoltaic cells, but inquiring minds will benefit from this brief discussion. Before you invest in a solar installation, take some time to understand them.

At they’re most basic, photovoltaic cells convert the energy of ultraviolet light into electricity. The sunlight hits the atoms of a semiconductor, most often silicon mixed with a very small amount of phosphorus. The phosphorus is included in the pure silicon crystal because it has an “extra” electron. When hit by sunlight, this electron is “knocked” loose. Should it find an atom lacking an electron, it would come to rest there, but the tight, perfect crystal lattice prevents that. The electron, known as a “free carrier,” continues wandering.

All the electrons excited by sunlight in a solar panel would move around aimlessy if we didn’t provide them any direction. Placing a conductor at either end of a panel allows us to dictate the direction of the electrons away from the panel and towards the batteries that are the next step in the solar installation.

Of course, this is a great reduction of the actual process of converting solar energy into electricity. The reality involves a greater understanding of physics and chemistry. Over the years, science and industry has harnessed the power of this simple interaction between a few molecules and sunlight to greater degrees, until today, when we have a finely tuned grasp on the process. Indeed, solar panels are far more efficient today than they ever have been in the past.

And that is just one of the reasons that today is the perfect time to invest in a solar installation for your home. If you’re eager to understand the power of investing in home solar, give us a call today and let us explore the options with you.

We all know or at least heard that converting from Metal Halide (High Intensity Discharge) to LED will save you money.

But how much? Are there any other reasons or difference you should know about?

In this article, we break down all the factors that you should be aware of before making a decision to convert from Metal Halide to LED. Here are the 9 reasons we think LED wins over Metal Halide.

Let’s take a look at the information on a typical 400 watt metal halide bulb. While specifications may vary, a visit to a popular online website that sells Metal Halide bulbs shows that a brand new bulb has the following specifications:

We have just as many customers wanting to convert to LED because of maintenance savings as they do for energy savings. Think about what we discussed, over the life of the LED retrofit kit, a customer would have to do 5-6 Metal Halide replacements. The higher the installation height, the higher the cost of replacement. And if you have a facility loaded with lights, this becomes a significant budget amount every year that you must take into consideration. Now, we know that reduced maintenance time on lights does not translate into dollars saved because it is highly unlikely that people will lose their jobs over the fact there is much less work to do. However, these people will have time to now work on things that matter, like fixing the machines that make the company money instead on replacing lights that cost the company money.

When you take a measurement of light with a light meter, it reads lumens. And this measurement of all the lights that contribute to the light at that location creates a measurement called foot candles. But let’s think about that light that is being measured. Metal Halide creates all sorts of light, in all spectrum’s, visible or otherwise. This includes UV and IR spectrum’s, visible to the measuring device but not visible to the human eye. LED, on the other hand, does not produce UV and IR. Therefore, its readings using the same light meter is only picking up visible spectrum’s.

So there is a fun little test you can do. Have 2 light sources, LED and Metal Halide. And first ask, which one is brighter? And if the right LED source was selected, they should say LED. And then use a light meter, and the light meter may say the Metal Halide area is producing more foot candles. And so now you know part of the reason, but wait, there’s 2 other pieces of information you need to know.

Click here to see our infographic on Retrofitting vs Replacing.

Conclusion

The majority of contractors and building owners are creating networks that interconnect all the components. These provide a single point of monitoring and control the different types of devices, sensors, and equipment.

While wiring the building during the construction phase is the ideal situation, modifying or upgrading existing systems can be challenging.

As the building gets bigger and more complex, so does its automation, making it a real task to interconnect all components. It may require hybrid systems consisting of the UTP, RS-232/RS-485, wired and wireless networks, and a variety of protocols. However, there is still a need to unify all these. It’s best to have a single point of managing and controlling the devices regardless of the style, location, function, and type of network.

As building automation evolves, there are now industry standard network protocols that allow people to interconnect components from different manufacturers. The three most commonly used interoperable protocols in use today include:

Building automation enables efficient control of the various systems and conditions in the building. This allows the occupants and owners to save costs, while improving comfort and living conditions. It adds the ability to automatically monitor and adjust the lighting, air conditioning, heating, ventilation, security and other parameters. Specific benefits include:

Building automation offers several benefits to the owners and occupants of the facilities. It allows the savings of resources such as energy and water while improving the conditions and comfort of the space.

As building automation networking evolves, equipment and applications from different manufacturers are able to work together via standard interfaces and protocols. This allows consumers to benefit from the latest technology and decreases our ecological footprint.

If you’ve been contemplating upgrading your home electrical system with your very own solar panel installation, there is no better time than summer. Here are a few reasons to make those dreams a reality.

The first is that you’ll get the best performance out of your system when the sun is shining the most. Of course, your solar array is going to give you energy savings all year long, especially in sunny southern California but in the summer, you’ll see impressive results right away that will really show you the potential of home solar power.

Without the threat of inclement weather preparing your home and installing your new system is much faster, translating to a more painless process for you. It also means that we have more jobs in the summer, so you might need a little advance scheduling. But all that is beside the biggest reason that you should pursue a solar panel installation:

The sooner you get solar at your home, the sooner you can start saving.

As you know, power prices increase all the time, with an average increase of around five percent a year. While municipal power increases, solar power provides a point of stability for your energy bill. Your solar power will always cost the same amount, so every time municipal power increases, your savings do too.

And with generous tax rebates and solar leasing agreements, you can establish an impressively low cost investment on your solar panel installation. You might even qualify for no down payment. You pay the cost of installation and parts over the life of your solar panel, even as you see instant deductions in your power bill.

As you can see, taking action now translates to intense savings for years to come. Don’t wait another minute. Let us help you take charge of you energy and financial future this summer.