I have a PV system set up at the farm down home, it works great too. Just in case anyone is wondering, PV stands for Photo Voltaic and are cells that are constructed usually of silicon or similar semiconductor material. They are photosensitive and produce electric current when exposed to light. Basically what I just told you is that they are solar panels. We have them in the roof of the house, among other places, but we also have generators (the farm is pretty far out there and it's near impossible to get city power run out to it without paying out the nose for it, but it's useless, we have used this type of stuff for years and ever since the place has existed, there has never been any type of public utility on the property except for a few natural gas wells that get pumped off and we get paid for). The only other thing is you need to face the panels south when you install them, that way they get the most out of the sun.

You can combine individual cells to form arrays which in turn produce larger amounts of power. A typical home system (from what I have been told) for a utility grid tied connection is in the 3 to 4 kilowatt per hour range. We have enough down home that we are ( I am pretty sure ) in the the 16 kilowatt area somewhere plus we have a lot of batterys also, part of the reason for so many panels. It's free energy!