Power to the People Home Solar Power Tutorial

What would you do if your power went off for a week or more? How long would you be able to stay in your home? For people in an emergency situation, like when a big storm takes out the power lines in their area, most people could stay at home if they could run the refrigerator, the house lights, the well pump, the microwave, the TV and receiver, and the cell phone charger. This way they could keep food cold and frozen, keep all the lights on, use their normal water supply, cook their food and stay in communication with the outside world. This list of essential needs for survival is called 'critical loads' in this book. If you had a solar power system like the one described in this book, you could supply all of the power for all of your critical loads all of the time. If you ever do 'run out' of solar power, this system will automatically switch the critical loads to the grid. When solar power is again available, this system will automatically switch the critical loads back to solar power. One of the biggest challenges with a home power system is determining what kind and size of equipment you need. Then you need to know how all the pieces hook together. It turns out that there is a great deal of information available on the web about all of the separate parts of a home solar power system, but the information is scattered around many different websites, each with information about one piece of the puzzle.This book will introduce you to power from solar panels, and provides a start-to-finish guide that describes the order to do things, from initial idea to final installation and operation.This book will show you how to analyze your own power needs and will give guidance on designing a system to meet your power goal. This includes a feasibility study, advice on how to choose equipment, and the details of installation.This book presents a detailed description of one specific hardware system with many pictures. This includes a complete 4-page wiring diagram that visually shows how everything hooks together. The wiring diagram answers many questions all by itself. Even though this is a start-to-finish guide for one particular system, the tools presented can be used to help you analyze your own situation so that you can get a good idea of the equipment needed to meet your unique requirements. You then will have the knowledge to move forward with your own solar power system.Chapter 7 is a complete Operation Manual that describes how to use the solar system once it is installed. The Operation Manual covers Start-up and Shut-down procedures, and instructions on how to setup the inverter and charger. Instructions are included on how to charge the solar system batteries from a generator. The original research and design work for the solar system presented took over one year to complete as a part-time job. This book would have saved at least 11-months of research time.