Solar Powered Air Conditioning

If you live in a city or township which gets plenty of sunlight, it will be an excellent idea to harness solar power in order to cool your home. Thus, if you live in London or Limerick where it rains a lot, investing in a solar-cooled house will probably not give you a good return on your investment. When you decide to go ahead, one of the most important things to do is to have someone conduct an air conditioning inspection for your place.

Learn more about air conditioning inspection

In most cases, you will probably refer to a licenced electrician to perform this air conditioning inspection. This type of inspection will not only ensure that the air conditioning system works. It will also ascertain that the correct electrical system is in place for you and your neighbour's safety. Having someone independently conduct the air conditioning inspection for you will also make sure that the technician involved will be able to spot your possible errors. This will be hard or impossible to do if you would rather perform your own inspection.

In addition, most residential areas have ordinances with regards to using alternative energy. By far, the easiest way to accomplish your project of converting to solar energy for your home cooling needs is to do it system wide. This means that you will totally rely on solar energy for all of your power needs.

Of course, doing this will mean totally disconnecting the mains as your source of electricity. And when it comes to this matter, some cities might not allow the convenience of being able to flick a switch in order to reconnect to the mains if your solar power source goes bonkers. It being better to err on the side of caution, you will definitely need a professional involved both in terms of the technicality of setting up the whole thing as well as the legal ramifications of the matter.

Just to give you a basic idea of just how much solar power will be required for your project, a solar panel about the size of a brick exposed to the sun for say, three hours, will only give you about half an hour of actual electricity. Therefore, you will need a much bigger panel for the job, one that can easily cover your home's entire roof. So another important question to ask yourself is how much is your total electrical consumption over a full 24-hour cycle.

If you answered 1,000-watt-hours, then four window-size roof panels will each have to generate 250-watt-hours or one-fourth of the total consumption in a single day. This calculation is based on the assumption that each panel can generate and store four hours' worth of sun time. And don't forget, your system needs to be completely safe and durable to last you for at least a few years to a decade.

Obviously, harnessing the power of the sun to lessen your reliance on the mains will need a lot of rethinking and hard work. However, many households around the world have accomplished what you are thinking of doing. With patience, perseverance, research, and a lot of thinking, utilizing the power of a relatively small star in the Milky Way galaxy is no longer an impossible dream.