The home that Erin and Brian Palmer built with solar panels on the roof

We’re not talking about Beatle George Harrison’s twangy tune, “Here comes the sun,” but the true power of the sun, even 93 million miles away, to warm our houses, cook our food, and keep our desktops humming on social media.

The simplest way to describe how solar does its work is that sunlight contains photons, packets of energy, that strike silicon cells, creating a flow of electrons and those electrons (traveling in one direction, a DC current) are harnessed in solar panels, later, usually “inverted,” so the current is AC, alternating, and then used in the domestic (and commercial) activities that are now mostly fossil fueled. Continue reading →