What To Do When You Produce More Electricity Than You Need
The Basics: What Happens to Excess Solar Power? When your solar panels generate more electricity
The higher the wattage, the more power the panel can generate. When the output power from solar panels exceeds the needs of a household or organisation, the system needs to manage this extra power effectively. Excess power may be converted to AC power by an inverter or fed into the grid.
As you might be thinking, excess solar energy is incredibly common. If your system is designed to supply a large fraction of your house's power, you're likely producing excess energy during the sunniest parts of the day.
Under ideal conditions, a solar panel may meet or exceed its power rating. However, in practice, power output often fluctuates. Solar panels come in a variety of wattages, ranging from small portable panels with a few watts to large utility-grade panels that produce hundreds of watts of power each.
Excess solar energy is all the electricity produced by your solar panels that you don't consume at that moment. So, if your solar panels generate a large amount of electricity between noon and 4 pm, when your only energy use is a fridge, everything not used by the fridge is excess solar energy.
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