Why solar cables instead of the regular ones?

The dawn of the eco-friendly measures to generate electricity in order to prevent environmental degradation has never looked brighter. There are new and safe alternatives to conventional sources of energy being launched every day. Naturally, as a result of this, the solar industry is riding the wave as well since it is one of the cleanest ways to generate electricity. Now anyone who is familiar with the solar techniques of power generation might have come across with the term ‘solar wire’ or ‘solar cable’. And this gives birth to an obvious question being, ‘why solar cable?’.

Just like any other energy generating system, the energy is transported off-site and then sent to the power providers and then ultimately customers. And wires and cables are the media through which the transportation of the power takes place. Solar energy systems do no use the regular power cables and wires that we see in our day to day usage and that is for a number of reasons. Solar cables vary from regular cables in various aspects.

The first in line would be the construction variation between solar cables and regular cables. Usually, the solar cables are made out of a single conducting material which would name them ‘solar wires’ and even in the case of a group of conductors, the multiple wires that are present inside the cable are built in a different fashion. On the other hand, a lot of the cables that are made for regular usage would be clubbed together, thus justifying the term ‘cables’ and not ‘wires’.

The jacketing or the outer layer would be the next one on the list. Since most of the solar energy systems operate outdoors, so does the cables or wires connecting them. And in the case of regular cables, they are usually buried beneath the ground or tucked away inside the walls. This means that regular household or even industrial cables are subjected to substantially less wear and tear while the solar cables have to endure a lot of beating. For this reason, the solar cables are coated with a different material which is much more resistant to the surrounding and thus are rated for much longer use. The regular cables are mostly rated for 8 to 10 years of use but the solar cables are expected to maintain their performance for up to 25 years with only 10% of the drop in the efficiency. Different solar cable manufacturers have their own material that they use to achieve this level of robustness in their cables and are graded as per the same.

The last of the key differences in regular cables and solar cables is the wire gauge, or more specifically AWG (American Wire Gauge) that basically implies the thickness of the wires inside the cable. Generally speaking, the higher the wire gauge of a wire is, the smaller the wires are. Regular cables come in a huge variety of gauges, ranging all the way from 2 to 20, while can still go beyond this range. While on the other side, solar cables are always to transmit a very high amount of energy and thus 10 is the most common gauge for the wires in solar cables.

These are all the primary distinctions between solar and regular cables and which is why they are not interchangeable and are built keeping their intended functionality in mind. 

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