Solar PV For Remote Locations

Even though it’s hard to imagine when you live in even a moderately sized town, there are a great many places on Earth that simply don’t have access to power lines. Sometimes this because they’re very remote and other times, it’s because of civil, atmospheric or economic unrest has caused the power to become far too spotty to be relied upon. Whatever the cause, the uniquely portable nature of solar power cab bring lights where they’ve never been before and keep range cattle with plenty of fresh water thanks to solar powered agricultural pumps.

Unlike passive solar applications such as heating water or drying fruit, active PV systems generate a direct current (DC) that may be used by any device, though people very often run it through a line conditioner and inverter to make the power suitable for typical home electronic devices that run on alternating current (AC) power. Many dedicated systems run on DC current but not, inverted into AC power.

Very often in farming and ranching situations, the locations are so rural, there’s little that can be done except to find a type of power generation that doesn’t require transmission lines and solar power is uniquely suited to such situations. One very early use of solar was in road signs, especially the ones that blink on and off or actually give information.

PV solar systems created for agricultural or stand-alone work in the United States very often mimic conditions in the less developed world. As such, they tend to be self-contained units that use a portable device to collect and store the resultant charge in a small bank of batteries.

While many residential homeowners choose to utilize a grid tie inverter type of system that allows them to forego a large battery bank to be part of the power company’s electrical grid. In the case of remote installations, there is no grid to back up to, so you’re completely on your own. Since there is no practical backup, these systems are often dedicated and very carefully planned to not tap the supply when it’s too low.

One example of such a remote PV project feeds current to the most impoverished members of an African nation that just happens to be an oil-exporter. Such seeming contradictions in solar power implementation can mean the difference between life and death in the case of solar powered pumps and filtration that brings fresh water to a village.

This also frees up women from the burden of having to travel all day just to get a jug of fresh, clean drinking water without parasites and allows them extra time to pursue an education or whatever they’d like.