In
Irvine California most of the solar homes are not off grid. Off grid
is a term used when a home or company relies exclusively on its own
power sources, whether they are solar kits, wind farms, or tidal power.
As the term implies, the home or business is not connected to the regular
power grid.
While going off grid is an admirable goal for anyone looking to go green,
most solar panel kits don’t include everything you would need
to do so. For instance you would need far more storage capacity in an
off grid home than you would for a home that supplements its regular
power with solar panels. This is because residential power use usually
peaks at or near sunset- right when a solar based power system stops
producing power. And that’s just the first technical difficulty.
You would also need to account for cloudy days, when your solar system
would be operating at less than peak capacity. Even in places like Irvine
that see over 300 days of sun a year, cloudy days will happen. You also
require a larger array than most kits offer. A standard solar kit includes
panels for the production of about 2 kilowatt hours of electricity.
The average household uses slightly more than that, and if you want
to go off grid your production needs to exceed your use significantly.
