Rf Radiation From Smart Meters
RF, or radio-frequency, radiation is actually one of the three types of EMF radiation. The other two are magnetic field and electric field.
Radiofrequency is emitted from just about any device that communicates or receives communication wirelessly. Radio waves are used to send packets of data between two wireless devices, but as a result, they also emit a type of non-ionizing radiation.
RF radiation has been shown in hundreds of studies to have negative biological effects when youre exposed to it for long periods of time. Common sources are cell-phones, WiFi routers, cell towers, including 5G towers, and smart meters.
Smart meters, in case you dont know, are simply utility meters that track usage and transmit data about that usage wirelessly. This saves the utility company money because they no longer have to send employees to read the meters.
However, when these smart meters transmit that data, they emit a large amount of RF radiation, exposing people that are near it. Many smart meters are on the outside wall opposite a bedroom and therefore pose a real risk.
When it comes to radiation from a solar panel system, we need to look at how much radiation is being emitted specifically from the solar smart meter.
Now, not every system will have one of these meters, you are likely only to have a specific solar energy smart meter if you sell some of the energy back to a company, or if the area you live in requires them.
Differences Between Active And Passive Solar Energy Systems
- Active solar heating systems are more complicated than passive ones.
- Passive systems are less expensive than the other type.
- In passive systems, the solar collectors trap and circulate the suns energy naturally. In comparison, an active system involves mechanical and electrical devices.
- You can implement passive systems only in new buildings or houses. In contrast, active systems are suitable for both new and existing houses.
As energy consumption is increasing, passive systems may fall short in many places. So, active solar heating systems seem to offer more practical solutions. Below are some ways in which you can explore active systems.
How Many Solar Panels Are Required To Run A Heat Pump
As a rule of thumb, you will need about 1500 watts of solar power for every 1 Ton of heat pump rating . It is 5 times 300-watt solar panels.
The exact answer depends on various factors such as the type of heat pump, wattage rating, and energy requirements. If you are using other forms of heating, the number will vary depending on that as well.
Heres a look at some popular heat pumps and their average energy usage. This will help you understand the electricity usage of the pumps better:
- 5 tons 2400 watts
- 2 tons 2800 watts
- 5 tons 6400 watts
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Air Source And Ground Source Heat Pumps
Heat pumps extract heat from the outside environment and dump it into your home. They work by using a compressor and a coil filled with refrigerant, similar to your refrigerator or an air conditioner. In fact, heat pumps usually are able to work as air conditioners in the summer, making them an even more useful addition to your home.
One big advantage of heat pumps is that they are very efficient heating devices – much more so than electric resistance heaters.
Generally speaking, there are two types:
Mechanism : Convection Through The Air Gap
A conventional home solar panel system is mounted on a racking system that is connected to the roof. That racking system holds the solar panels several inches away from the roof surface.
This standoff distance provides a gap through which air can flow. That airflow can carry away heat from the back of the panels and the roof surface, reducing the effect of heat absorbed by your solar panels.
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How A Photovoltaic Solar Panel Works
This panel operates on the basis of a phenomenon known as the photoelectric effect. The photoelectric effect occurs when certain materials are struck by light and they emit electrons.
A photovoltaic solar panel is made up of a certain number of silicon cells, usually 60 to 62.
The panel consists of two layers connected to each other by conducting wires. The upper layer has a surplus of electrons whereas the lower layer has a deficit of electrons.
What purpose do these two layers serve? Generating something called potential difference and thereby creating an electric current. Batteries function according to this well-known phenomenon.
In concrete terms, the photons from the sunlight strike the panel and generate the photoelectric effect. The electrons that are emitted upon impact pass through the two layers to produce an electric current.
On average, only 20% of the suns energy is converted into electricity with this type of panel. The rest is converted into heat and therefore wasted.
Power Through Winter Storms With Solar Battery Storage
In winter storms, the grid may not fare as well as solar panels. Power outages can be a frequent occurrence during the winter months, with some outages leaving families in the cold and in the dark for days.16 Although record numbers of Americans are staying home due to the pandemic, rising global temperatures and increasingly extreme weather events are making it much more difficult to ride out the next storm without reliable back-up power.17, 18
Installing a grid-connected, rooftop solar panel system with battery storage can give you clean, renewable back-up electricity so you can power through the next blackout. Weve seen that solar panels are incredibly resilient in the face of extreme weather conditions. By pairing your panels with a solar battery, you can store up your sunny days for a stormy one.
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Passive Solar Heating System
Passive solar heating does not involve technologies but relies primarily upon the design of the building. For instance, having many south-facing windows allows more solar radiation inside the house. This will considerably increase the solar heat gain. Additionally, having less glass on the north-facing area to trap the heat.
Other passive solar heating techniques include landscaping using suitable trees and plants and creating overhangs. You can also manipulate solar space heating by using curtains and blinds. All you have to do is keep them open during winter days and close them in the summer months. You can check out some more examples of passive space heating systems below:
- Using concrete floors
- Building thermal mass masonry to trap heat
- Installing airtight insulation methods on the outer walls to store the heat
- Creating more sunrooms and greenhouses
- Implementing active daylight techniques
These processes are called passive solar heating because none of the techniques use any mechanical or electrical devices for space heating.
How Do Solar Panels Insulate Your Roof
Solar panels essentially act as roof shades. They protect your roof from damage caused by UV radiation and excess heat.
Its important that there is at least a few inches of space between the panels and the roof. The reason that solar panels can decrease your roofs temperature is that they capture much of the suns energy that would otherwise hit your roof. Most of this energy is converted into heat, which then radiates all around the panel including toward the roof.
The only reason this radiating heat doesnt reach the roof and heat it up is that the wind carries it away before it gets the chance to do so. Thats why its essential that your panels are installed a few inches above the roof and that wind can flow into the space between.
These panels can reduce the amount of heat that reaches the roof by around 38%, which results in the small temperature decrease I mentioned above. To be specific, they disperse the heat from the sun in four ways:
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What Is An Inverter And What Does It Do
If the installation consists of photovoltaic solar panels, the generated output must be converted for domestic use. The domestic electric grid operates on alternating current, whereas the current generated by the photovoltaic solar panels is direct.
This calls for an inverter, a device that converts direct current output from the solar panels into alternating current that can be fed into the domestic electric grid. The modified current is then fit for household use. There are different types of inverters: centralized inverters, microinverters, and inverters with a power optimizer.
The centralized inverter is a high-power inverter. All panels are connected to it. While more cost-efficient, it also comes with a higher risk because a single inverter supports all the panels connected in series.
With a microinverter, however, each panel or pair of panels is connected to its own microinverter. This optimizes production because the installation is only partially affected if one microinverter fails.
Last but not least, an inverter with a power optimizer is a classic inverter with an added power optimizer. In plain terms, the optimizer functions much like a set of micro-inverters coupled to a centralized inverter.
Liquid Active Solar System
You can also employ a liquid solar heating system in your house. To implement this, you will have to install a radiant slab system. They are panels of pipes or tubes installed beneath the floors and inside the walls of your building.
The heated liquid is pumped through your home. This process radiates heat into the room from the tunes. For this, you will have to install a water storage tank to store the solar-heated liquid and transfer the heat. You can also use this system to heat water in your home.
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Energy Absorbed By The Earth
Not all of the solar energy that reaches the Earths atmosphere is absorbed by the Earth. This is due to something known as the Earths energy budget. This budget accounts for the fact that some of the energy incident on the outer atmosphere of the planet is immediately reflected back into space.
Due to reflection by the atmosphere, clouds, and Earths surface we can approximate that 70% of solar energy incident on the edge of the Earths atmosphere is actually absorbed by the Earth. Taking this into account, the actual average amount of solar energy absorbed by the Earth amounts to:
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Do Solar Panels Get Hot
Solar panels directly face the sun from when the sun rises to when the sunsets. However, do these solar panels ever overheat since they face the sun all the time? Do they overheat? Do they radiate heat and affect the surroundings?
Dont fret, in this article, we are going to do a deep dive into these topics and give you a couple of methods to cool your solar panels if it heats up or overheats.
Without further ado, lets begin!
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How To Cool Solar Panels
No matter which panels you choose to use, there will always be a loss of power output due to heat. However, here are two of the most effective ways to mitigate the effects of hot temperatures on solar panels.
Panels Are A Little Like People They Like Temperate Conditions With Light Winds And Low Humidity And Thats When They Function The Best
This story was originally published by CityLab and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.
Solar cells need sunlight to generate electricity, but with rays also comes heat. As the planet gets warmer, scientists are warning that temperatures could become too high for solar panels to perform efficiently.
Currently, solar photovoltaic technology makes up 55 percent of all renewable-power capacity, and it will continue to boom, according to a 2018 report on the state of renewable energy. Its unlikely the planet will become too hot for solar panels to function altogether any time soon. But a recent paper out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology did find that for every degree Celsius rise in temperature, the voltage output of solar modules declines by an average of 0.45 percent. Under one warming scenario projected by the U.N.s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which estimates global temperature to rise by 1.8 degrees C by 2100, that comes out to a 1 percent reduction.
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In the short run, the reductions will affect the solar energy market. Economic margins will remain low, Buonassisi says. If you deprive a solar panel of 1 percent of energy generation, and lets say you drop from 3 percent to 2 percent, thats a 33 percent drop in your net revenue, so it makes a really big deal.
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What Is The Best Heating System For Underfloor Heating
Of the two types of underfloor heating systems that we discuss here, the direct heating source is better. If you live in a mild climate, either method may be okay.
However, in terms of energy use, the direct heating method is by far more efficient.
The benefits of using a direct heating system include:
- Smaller Solar Array Requirements You do not need as many solar panels to run a direct heating underfloor heating system because there is lower energy usage.
- More applicable on cloudy days due to the lower energy requirements On cloudy days, there is less incoming solar radiation which means the solar array produces less energy. With the direct heating underfloor heating system, you would likely still have the energy to power the system, even on cloudy days.
- Because the system uses less energy than an indirect underfloor heating system, your household uses less energy annually with a direct underfloor heating system.
The Source Of The Myth
This myth recently surfaced in the sequel to Freakanomics, call Superfreakanomics. Some people are very disappointed with the authors, who created quite a stir with their first book. The source of the myth is a quote by Nathan Myhrvold, the former Chief Technology Officer of Microsoft :
“The problem with solar cells is that they’re black, because they are designed to absorb light from the sun. But only about 12 percent gets turned into electricity, and the rest is reradiated as heat–which contributed to global warming.”
With the new Catlin Arctic Survey report showing that the Arctic Sea is likely to be ice-free in summer months as soon as 10 years from now there is renewed urgency to address anthropogenic climate change ahead of the COP15 meeting in Copenhagen later this year. The prospect that solar panels, the main symbol of renewable energy, could be contributing more to the problem than they lessen it would certainly be a shocking revelation.
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Researchers Discover Solar Heat Island Effect Caused By Large
by Graham Binder, University of Maryland
Large-scale solar power plants raise local temperatures, creating a solar heat island effect that, though much smaller, is similar to that created by urban or industrial areas, according to a new study.
The finding by Mitchell A. Pavao-Zuckerman, an assistant professor from the University of Maryland’s College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, and colleagues from the University of Arizona, University of Madison-Wisconsin, and the Nevada Center of Excellence appears to contradict previous theoretical work and modeling studies predicting solar power installations would decrease temperatures around them by intercepting some of the sun’s potentially warming energy and converting it into electricity.
“The understanding of energy balance – how heat moves in and out of ecosystems that change from natural to built settings is a big game changer for the future. Consider how PV panels absorb and reflect certain types of radiation which prevents the soil beneath from cooling like it would under a regular night sky,” said Pavao-Zuckerman. “With this knowledge at our fingertips, we can mitigate environmental impacts by creating novel systems to make PV power plants work more efficiently and produce other co-benefits.”
The multidisciplinary team examined the “heat island” effect of solar energy installations using experiments that spanned three different desert ecosystems in Arizona:
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Energy Produced By Thermal Solar Panels
The amount of energy produced by solar thermal panels is usually defined on an annual basis . This can partly be justified by the fact that the limitation of energy production is not linked solely to the available sunlight but also to the objective in terms of quantity of water heated . From French regulations, for one person, the annual production with thermal solar panels is:
where T is the temperature difference between cold and hot water . The factor 1 2 comes from an adjustment to account for the fact that only a part of the need for warm water can be covered by solar energy. This factor can vary depending on location, climate , seasonality and technical features of the installation . A typical value of 1 2 is taken here. Furthermore, it is considered that this per capita energy requirement can be satisfied by 1 m2 of thermal panel. So, the power averaged over the year would be:
1 2 factor has disappeared here because we consider ideal heating conditions for the definition of the target. The production of the thermal panel is then computed in three steps:
2. The total amount of energy produced is summed from midnight the previous night to the current time t: tmidnightEther prod dt .
3. If the quantity of energy produced since midnight reaches the target Ether target, then any additional production during the same day is wasted and further energy production is set to zero.
To summarize, for solar thermal panels, the production is parameterized as:
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