How do you make a solar plant?

There are two kinds of solar plants, PV, or Photovoltaics and Solar Thermal.

With a PV installation, you put out a bunch of panels, these panels are hooked to a device called an inverter, which changes DC current that the PV panels make to AC current that you use on the electrical grid.

A solar thermal plant uses mirrors to concentrate sun rays on a collector array that heats a working fluid. The working fluid drives a turbine that drives a generator/alternator which feeds the grid.

But at the simplest level, the home, most systems are PV. Home PV panels are 12 volt. In my own system I have 6 solar panels, Each is a 285 watt 12 volt PV panel. I have them set up in 2 3 panel strings. These two strings - each 855 watt. feed into the combiner box; Here, we attach the two strings in parallel and the 12 volts become 24 volts. I have a 24 volt system. This feeds into an inverter which converts DC to AC which is fed into the house.

The logic of an inverter is to feed excess electricity to ground OR to a charge controller. The charge controller senses the charge state of a battery, and when the charge state is low it takes the excess electricity and pumps it into the batter which is energy storage. When the panels can not keep up with demand, the batteries are used to compensate and the battery DC is used to feed the inverter.

During the day, the batteries charge, during the night, they discharge. In my system with average use, the batteries are charged by 11 AM and then go from bulk (collecting) to float (full), the excess power then going to ground, wasted. In my case I have a 4000 watt inverter and 4 deep cycle 6 volt batteries in series.

Does this answer your question?

1) You don't need to charge solar panels. They merely convert light to electricity.

2) They don't wear out. After 20-25 years they will still produce 80% of the electricity they did.

3) Batteries maintained properly and not deeply discharged will last 10-15 years.

4) The break even point is 4-5 years in most installations.

A home use for solar thermal is solar water heater. These are required in Israel and Mexico. They save vast amounts of power that the grid does not have to supply.