Solar panel arrays are commonly used today in a variety of applications. Many placements of these solar panel arrays aren’t noticeable if you don’t look for them. And some aren’t where you would see them, but you benefit from them every day. Solar power is popping up everywhere in low-power applications. And as advances in photovoltaic technology brings the price of solar power installation, more governments are looking seriously at solar power as a viable alternative to fossil fuels.

Panel arrays have been used for years to power satellites, remote weather stations, and on islands where other power sources are not usable or practical. These arrays are made of some type of photo-reactive semiconductor that collects light from the sun and converts it into direct current (DC). Then these solar panels are attached to a converter to convert the power into alternating current (AC), which is what all of our homes and businesses have. Then the power is used directly, diverted to storage batteries for later use, or sold back to the electric company if you are on the grid.

So where are all these low-power solar-powered items that are hiding all around us? Most everybody has at least one low-power item that is likely powered by a small solar panel array in their household – one that has been around so long you may have even forgotten that it doesn’t require batteries – a calculator! That strip of dark bronze rectangles is a small photovoltaic array. Now just think a little bigger and you will start noticing solar panels all around you.

A few that I see regularly are on top of street or parking lot lights, on the highway department’s lighted message boards, and on flashing buoys that mark the channel in the river. Without leaving my neighborhood, I can find low-power solar array applications. All of my neighbor’s landscaping, from the path lighting to the fountain, is solar powered. Down the street, a family heats their pool with solar power. And one house has panel arrays made to look like decorative shutters.

These low-power applications are very cost-effective since they take up so little space to collect enough solar power to run the item they are attached to. With new advances in photovoltaic technology, solar power continues to come down in cost and in size. Because of this, large governments and small municipalities are seeing solar power as a viable alternative to coal power for the first time.

Individual households should start considering solar power, too. You probably aren’t ready to install an entire solar panel arrays, but you could install solar-powered landscape lighting as an intro to solar power. You get to save a little fossil fuel AND you don’t have to run all that pesky wiring!