Photovoltaic systems for residential purposes
Most of scientists predict that in the next 30 years major part of electrical energy will come from small PV systems. Even now, more and more households consider investment in residential PV systems.
The only barrier that we need to overcome today is energy storage because in many cases putting energy into the grid is often much less economically justified than constant consumption or storage. Unfortunately modern batteries systems are still too expensive for domestic purposes. Because of those problems to maximize usage of energy from PV systems we need to know few ‘tricks’.
Conversion of energy
First of all everyone who wants to maximize incomes from his PV system must consider conversion electrical energy into a heat energy. Immersion water heaters powered by energy from solar system is very efficient source of hot water for residual purposes and swimming pools, especially when you use less energy than your PV system can produce. What is more, hot water storage tanks can storage hot water for hours what gives you opportunity to use solar energy even after dusk.
Heat pumps and PV system cooperation
The other interesting way to use solar energy in your house, instead of putting it into the grid, is to combine PV system with heat pump. Heat pumps are devices using thermomechanical processes to generate heat or coolness. There are mainly electrical and in most cases have coefficient of performance index equal to 4. That means they can convert 1 kWh of electrical energy into 4 kWh of heat energy. What is more, like it was mentioned before, they can create both heat and coolness. That means they can heat your house in winter season and replace your air conditioner in summer.
The other important aspect of photovoltaic systems for residual purposes, when it comes to energy usage, is matching your PV system to your needs.
Many dealers of PV systems are focused on selling the largest PV systems that their customers can afford. This is very bad strategy, especially for customers that don’t have engineering knowledge.
Residual PV systems in most cases where overproduction of energy is unwanted should be matched properly to the needs. That’s means yearly production of your PV system should be similar to your yearly demand on electrical energy.
It will guarantee that your system will be always able to satisfy your needs and will be relatively cheap.
When you want to install larger system you must be sure that for next few years size of subsidies will equal higher price of your PV system.
If you want to learn how to create project of PV system in EasySolar app check our previous article
As you can see full utilization of PV energy is possible even when we cannot afford expensive storage system. Conversion of our energy and proper scale of our PV systems can make it much more affordable, even in countries which governments aren’t likely to support renewable sources of energy. Moreover those methods of maximize usage of green energy produced by your PV system are still not as effective as batteries and probably in the next few years storage systems will be equal cost-efficient.