How Does Solar Electric Power Work?

How does a solar PV system work for your Home?

SOLAR POWER FOR YOU AND THE GRID

The process seems a little magical but is pretty simple. When sunlight hits your solar panels electricity is created, roughly proportional to intensity of the sunlight. The electricity coming off the panels is direct current (DC) and it is transformed into alternating current (AC) which can be used in your house or on the grid. The amount of AC electricity produced by the solar array is constantly measured by a production meter. Your normal electric meter is still tracking the amount of electricity you use in the house, just as it has always done. On a sunny day when no one is home, most of the electricity produced will go out to the grid. At night or on a day with heavy cloud cover, your array will not be producing electricity so the home will be drawing from the grid. It serves you as a giant battery. At the end of the month, your electrical usage is subtracted from what your array produced so the utility can determine what you owe (if anything). This called Net Metering.

Community SOLAR POWER Projects

There are two extremes of solar power project scale in the US:

The home installation, with a few thousand watts of solar production capacity from about 20 panels. Usually this provides just enough electricity for the home.
The utility-scale solar developments that can be more than 500 megawatts and cover several square miles. This size project produces enough electricity to power over 100,000 homes and there are no solar arrays even one hundredth this large in Vermont.

There are significant cost disadvantages to a custom solar power system for your home. And some Vermonters may have objections to utility scale solar developments covering hundreds or thousands of acres. The largest project in Vermont is a 25 acre development in Essex. Even that size solar array is not an easy fit for a small Vermont town.

The middle way is community scale solar projects that provide a much lower cost of installation and won't impact the landscape in a big way. These arrays can fit on an acre or two of open land, which can continue to be used for pasture. When they outlive their usefulness in 30 or 40 years, they can be dismantled easily. Also, a community project brings creates local construction jobs and keeps the money we now pay for electricity local. Best of all it can be owned and maintained by community members. You can see where your power comes from, and even watch it being made.