Size Of The Solar System

What Size Solar Battery Do I Need

So, youve decided that a solar battery is the perfect companion to your solar panel installation. The next step is determining what size battery youd need. But with so many variables coming into play, like home energy usage, solar system size or backup capabilities, it can be daunting trying to pick the right option.

Thats where this guide comes in handy. Read on to see what you should consider before choosing a battery size, as well as a quick comparison on system sizes.

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Solar System Size And Distance

How big are the planets and how far away are they compared to each other? See how the sizes of planets and the distances between them compare. And find out why it’s so hard to create a scale model of the solar system that accurately represents both size and distance on a single screen or the page of a book.

Watch en Español:Seleccione subtítulos en Español bajo el ícono de configuración.

Storing Energy With A Solar Panel Battery

With a solar panel battery, you never have to worry about getting stuck without power! Your battery backup will be ready to kick in during an emergency or during periods of low productivity. The batteries are stored on the ground and wired to your roof system. Be sure to inquire about a solar panel battery with your solar company.

Contact Sun Badger Solar today to get your free custom solar estimate for your home in a matter of seconds!

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What’s The Order Of The Planets In The Solar System

Over the past 60 years, humans have begun to explore our solar system in earnest. From the first launches in the late 1950s until today, we’ve sent probes, orbiters, landers and even rovers to every planet in our solar system. But can you name all eight of those planets in order? And can you put them in the correct order?

In case you’re a little rusty, we’ll break down some common ways to order the planets plus a few tricks to help you remember them going forward. Let’s start with the distance from the sun.

The most common way to order the planets is by their distance from the sun. Using this method, the planets are listed in the following order:

Contents

• Neptune – 30.06 AU

AU stands for astronomical units it’s the equivalent to the average distance from Earth to the sun . It’s a common way astronomers measure distances in the solar system that accounts for the large scale of these distances. To put it another way, Mercury, which is closest, is 35.98 million miles from the sun, while Neptune, the farthest, is 2.79 billion miles from the sun. Earth is 92.96 million miles from the sun.

Calculate A Solar Energy System Requirement

You need to match the kilowatt hours of your solar PV system to the kilowatt hours that your appliances will use. To approximately estimate the energy requirement for a period of time, we need to multiply the hourly power consumption by the number of hours of intended use. An example for the same would be a 40W appliance in domestic use that will be used for 2 hours per day. The daily energy consumption for it would be 40*2 = 80 Wh.

Repeat that exercise for every appliance individually to calculate the daily energy requirement for your solar energy system. Add in any appliance that will use power while connected to the solar panel. The result will give you an indicative total energy requirement for the solar panel to produce for the day. You can work out the number of panels needed a few ways.

You calculate how many solar panels you may need by dividing the maximum hourly solar energy system output by the wattage output of one single panel. The number of solar panels of the size used in the calculation will theoretically meet that energy demand during a sunny day.

Another way is to multiply the households hourly energy requirement by the peak sunlight hours for the area. Then divide that answer by the wattage of the solar panel intended to be used.

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Solar System Formation And Discovery

Approximately 4.5 billion years ago a dark cloud of gas and dust began to collapse. As it shrank, the cloud flattened into a swirling disk known as a solar nebula, according to NASA Science .

The heat and pressure eventually became so high that hydrogen atoms began to combine to form helium. The nuclear reactions released vast amounts of energy and our sun was formed.

The sun accumulated about 99% of the available matter and the remaining material further from the sun formed smaller clumps inside the spinning disk. Some of these clumps gained enough mass that their gravity shaped them into spheres, becoming planets, dwarf planets and moons. Other leftover pieces became asteroids, comets and smaller moons that make up our solar system.

Read more: How did the solar system form?

For millennia, astronomers have followed points of light that seemed to move among the stars. The ancient Greeks named them planets, meaning “wanderers.” Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn were known in antiquity, and the invention of the telescope added the Asteroid Belt, Uranus, Neptune, Pluto and many of these worlds’ moons. The dawn of the space age saw dozens of probes launched to explore our system, an adventure that continues today.

There have been five human-made objects so far, Voyager 1, Voyager 2, New Horizons, Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11, that have crossed the threshold into interstellar space.

Related:How much of the solar system is made of interstellar stuff?

How Many Batteries Are Needed To Power A House

How many batteries would you need to power the average home?

If your home consumes 30kWh every 24 hours and you want to have 24 hours autonomy, then you can easily work out how many batteries you would need.

There are two choices for home energy storage batteries lead-acid deep-cycle or lithium iron phosphate. I prefer LiFeP04 but as lead-acid are still the most common, Ill use them in an example.

Deep-cycle batteries can be discharge up to 80% of their capacity, but 50% is recommended in order to maximize battery life.

This means that we need to double the amount of energy required from the batteries, simply beacuse half of it isnt normally available. 80% Depth of Discharge is OK from time to time.

The calculation looks like this:

Energy for 24 hours = 30kWh

30kWh in battery amp-hours = 2500Ah

Total battery capacity needed for 24 hours = 2500Ah x 2 = 5000Ah

25 batteries rated at 200Ah will be required to power this home for 24 hours.

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Walk The Solar System

To walk the solar system youll need to convert the Astronomical Units to something walkable.

If you multiply each distance from the Sun by 100cm you can easily walk and mark out the Solar System, although you will need a big open space.

For example:

Start with the Sun at 0 cm.

Mercury 40 cm

Neptune 30 metres

Another idea is to use toilet paper and roll out a separate strip for each planet along the ground.

Remember 1 AU is 93 MILLION MILES!!! To put this into context the diameter of the Earth is only 7926 miles!!!

Grab the activity sheet below!

Procedure: Scale Model Of Relative Diameters Of Planets

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Why Do You Want To Get A Solar Battery

Motive is incredibly important. Some purchase batteries in the hope of saving money, while for others it is about having backup power in the case of an emergency. Knowing why you want to purchase a battery is useful to your decision in which one to get.

For example, if your goal is to have backup power, then a solar battery with backup capabilities would be more important than one with heaps of storage. If this is your goal, make sure to let the installer know that you want a battery that is capable of running during a blackout.

Where Did The Water Go

Many people know Mars as a dry and dusty planet, but it hasnt always been that way.

Approximately 4.1 to 3.8 billion years ago, Mars had a massive ocean called Oceanus Borealis. It dominated the northern hemisphere of the planet. Specific planetary conditions at that time let water exist on its surface. Changes in temperature, climate, and geology over the years gradually pushed water out to the atmosphere or into the ground.

Up to 99% of this ocean water is trapped within the planets crust, locked within special rocks called hydrous minerals.

Hydrous Minerals

Hydrous minerals are essentially rocks that have water , incorporated into their chemical structure.

There are four main classes of hydrous minerals: silicates, sulfates, silicas, and carbonates. While these minerals look pretty similar to the naked eye, their chemical compositions and structural arrangements vary. They are detectable by sophisticated equipment and can tell scientists how water geologically changes over time.

The new water map of Mars actually highlights the location of these hydrous minerals. It is a geological map of the rocks that are holding what remains of Marss ancient ocean.

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Average Solar System Size And Cost In North Carolina

For simplicity, lets look at some averages for solar system cost and size. In 2021, our average residential solar system size is 8.5kW which has an average price of $27,000 before incentives and $17,000 $20,000 after incentives. The graph below will give you a reference for how that average price scales up and down as system size changes.

As a reminder, this is just an average. By now, we hope its abundantly clear that there are many factors that go into determining exactly how much your solar system will cost.

For a full breakdown of solar costs and the variables that can impact the bottom line of your system, check out our guide to home solar costs.

Note: this illustration represents solar system pricing without battery storage.

How Big Is A Solar Panel

There are many brands of solar panel, and each brand is slightly different in size. However, on average, one standard solar panel will be approximately:

A solar panel is made up of a series of small photovoltaic cells wired together. Most domestic systems use solar panels that have 60 of these cells.

The full system consists of a number of solar panels, typically placed next to one another.

At YES Energy Solutions, we offer two types of solar panel, depending on the system you choose.

• StandardVikram Eldora Ultima 250W polycrystalline panel 1,640 mm à 992 mm à 40 mm
• DeluxeSolarWorld 280W monocrystalline panel 1,675 mm à 1,001 mm à 33 mm

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Planets In Order Of Size

Or you could order the planets by weight . Then, the list from most massive to least massive would be: Jupiter , Saturn , Neptune , Uranus , Earth , Venus , Mars , and Mercury . Interestingly, Neptune has more mass than Uranus, even though Uranus is larger! Scientists can’t put a planet on a scale, so to determine mass, they look at how long it takes nearby objects to orbit the planet and how far from the planet those objects are. The heavier the planet, the stronger it pulls on nearby objects.

Scale Model Of The Solar System

A solar system is a group of planets and other space material orbiting a star. In our solar system, that star is known as the Sun and the planets are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

The solar system models youve seen before probably dont show how much bigger some planets are than others, or, more importantly for space travel, how far away the planets are from the Sun and each other. The Earth is about 150 million kilometers from the Sun. Because this distance is so important to us Earthlings, it has been given a special name, called the Astronomical Unit for short. The Earth is one astronomical unit from the Sun. Planets that are closer to the Sun than the Earth have a measured distance of less than one A.U. while objects farther from the Sun than Earth have a measured distance of greater than one A.U.

The size of a planet can be determined from its diameter. Diameter is the length of a straight line that passes through the center of a circle or sphere and whose endpoints lie on the surface of the circle or sphere.

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Surface Conditions And Exosphere

The surface temperature of Mercury ranges from 100 to 700 K at the most extreme places: 0°N, 0°W, or 180°W. It never rises above 180 K at the poles, due to the absence of an atmosphere and a steep temperature gradient between the equator and the poles. The reaches about 700 K during , but only 550 K at .On the dark side of the planet, temperatures average 110 K.The intensity of on Mercury’s surface ranges between 4.59 and 10.61 times the .

Although the daylight temperature at the surface of Mercury is generally extremely high, observations strongly suggest that ice exists on Mercury. The floors of deep craters at the poles are never exposed to direct sunlight, and temperatures there remain below 102 K, far lower than the global average. This creates a where ice can accumulate. Water ice strongly reflects , and observations by the 70-meter and the in the early 1990s revealed that there are patches of high radar near the poles. Although ice was not the only possible cause of these reflective regions, astronomers think it was the most likely.

The icy regions are estimated to contain about 10141015 kg of ice, and may be covered by a layer of that inhibits . By comparison, the ice sheet on Earth has a mass of about 4×1018 kg, and Mars’s south polar cap contains about 1016 kg of water. The origin of the ice on Mercury is not yet known, but the two most likely sources are from of water from the planet’s interior or deposition by impacts of comets.

Fine Tuning Your System

So if your energy needs call for an 8.5kW system, but your budget is closer to $15k, we can work with you to scale your system down to closer to 7kW and were more than happy to show you all of the different options we can use to land at your budget.

Dont forget! Incentives like the 30% Federal Investment Tax Credit for solar can also help you reach your budget. Well go over this more in the next module.

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Other Sources Of Water On Mars

Despite being a graveyard for the bulk of the planets ocean, hydrous minerals are not the only source of water on Mars.

Water ice is present at both of Marss poles. The northern polar ice cap contains the only visible water on the planet, while the southern pole covers its water with a frozen carbon-dioxide cap.

In 2020, radar analyses suggested the presence of liquid water, potentially part of a network of underground saltwater lakes, close to the southern pole. In 2022, new evidence for this liquid water suggested that the planet may still be geothermally active.

More frozen water may be locked away in the deep subsurface, far below what current surveying equipment is able to inspect.

How Much Energy Do Solar Panels Provide

We now know how big one solar panel is, but what about the energy output? Generally, you can expect more than 300 watts of power per panel. The actual output of your system will depend on many variables.

• Size of the Panel: the larger the panel or system, the greater potential for energy output
• Material of the Panel: solar cells are either monocrystalline or polycrystalline silicon, and the former is more efficient in terms of energy output
• Amount of Direct Sunlight: some locations have a greater capacity for direct sunlight than others, which affects the overall output of your system

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Mapping Out The Next Missions

The new water map is highlighting areas of interest for future exploration on Mars.

There is a small chance that hydrous minerals may be actively forming near water sources. Finding where they co-exist with known areas of buried frozen water provides possible opportunities for extracting water.

ESAs Rosalind Franklin Rover will land in Oxia Planum, a region rich in hydrous clays, to investigate how water shaped the region and whether life once began on Mars.

Many more investigations and studies are developing, but for now, scientists are just getting their toes wet as they explore what hydrous minerals can tell us of Marss watery past.