A home solar power system has four components: photovoltaic panels, charging controller, battery pack and an inverter.

Home Solar Power Systems

Energy from the sun is absorbed by the photovoltaic panels, which convert it into electricity. The charging controller receives the electricity from the panels and it keeps the battery pack on full but does not overload it. The inverter receives the electricity from the battery pack and converts the DC voltage to household AC at 120 volts and 60 hertz.

Components

Photovoltaic panel

The price of a solar panel depends on its wattage. The higher the wattage the more you have to pay for the panel. Majority of the manufactures provide the wattage in terms of peak sun hours. The hours in which the sun is directly overhead and shining directly on the photovoltaic panel are called the peak sun hours.  

Charging controller

Charging controller plays a very important role in the home solar power system. It feeds electricity from the panels to the batteries and prevents over charging of the battery pack.
It also stops the electricity from flowing back to the panels when it's cloudy or dark.

Solar panels should never be connected to the battery pack without using a charging controller because this can cause permanent damage to the batteries and they'll probably explode.   

Battery pack

The battery pack typically consists of lead acid batteries and it store electricity generated by the solar panels during the day. The stored electricity is used when sunlight is not present.  

The batteries used with home solar power systems need to be deep cycle. Deep cycle batteries discharge to nearly empty and slowly recharge. They are designed to handle this cycle thousands of times before the battery is worn out. Car batteries do not work in the same way and they cannot be used in place of deep cycle batteries.


Inverter

An inverter's function is to convert DC electricity stored in the battery pack into 120V AC. Apart from a few things like stove, oven, air conditioner and dryer, everything else runs on 120V.

There are two main types of inverters sine wave and modified sine wave. The electricity that we get from the grid is sine wave. Modified sine wave is also known as a square wave and it is more energy efficient than the sine wave inverter.


Modified sine wave inverter will work with majority of the household devices. However, the efficiency will be lesser than sine wave. Motors will run warmer than normal and compact fluorescent light bulbs will give off a hum. You should ask the manufactures if the device will work with modified sine wave power.


The inverter also stops draining the batteries when they have been used to a certain level. The life span of a lead acid battery is reduced if it's completely drained.