The Three Popular Kinds of Residential Solar Power

If you are looking for ways to install a residential solar power system in your home, there are different types that you can actually choose from. These different types have their own advantages and drawbacks that you can use to determine which type is suitable for your home and which one will be able to satisfy your energy demands.

The grid inter-tied residential solar power system is one of the most common types used in residential houses today. Here, the solar power system is directly attached to both the home and the conventional electric utility grid. This type of power system gives the homeowner the freedom to easily switch from solar power to the electric utility system and vice versa whenever they need to. What makes this advantageous is that when the home needs more energy than what the solar power system is producing, it can easily draw the power from the electric utility. It also has fewer required components, so it costs lower than most of the other power systems sold in the market nowadays.

The next type is the grid inter-tied residential solar power system with battery back up. This generally works like the grid inter-tied system, except that there is an additional slot installed for the batteries. The batteries act as back-up power in times of power outages. And when there is excess solar energy collected by the panels, this can be stored in the batteries. In cases when there is more energy needed than what the solar power system can provide, the batteries can automatically be used before it draws energy from the electric utility. But this type of solar power system is more complicated to design and install, not to mention the fact that it is more expensive to purchase.

The last type is the off grid residential solar power system. As the name suggests, it is not directly connected to the home and the conventional electric utility system. It, instead, makes use of batteries and an electric generator. The solar panels collect energy and then store them in the batteries. After that the batteries become the main source of energy. But in the event that the home’s energy consumption is more than what is stored in the batteries, there is a need to use an electric generator to compensate for the increase in energy demand.