The Solar DIY Blog

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Building Your Own Solar Panel – Simple Steps
Building your own solar panel is becoming more financially viable these days with skyrocketing electricity and heating costs, combined with the rapidly declining cost of solar panels. Constructing a solar panel is cheap (you can do it for less than $200) is easy with the simple steps you are going to learn today, and can easily be done in a few hours. Once it is finished, install the panel in your home and you will notice a massive decrease in your next utility bill. By building numerous different panels you can actually create a system powerful enough to “remove you from the grid”- basically, you will stop receiving power bills and instead your utility company could be sending you checks at the end of every month. Now wouldn’t that be nice.

Building your own solar panel -

Step one- you need to get all of the required raw materials to produce the solar panel. Here is a list of what you will need, as well as where you can get the items, and what their rough cost will be,

* Solar Cells – eBay – approximately $80-$100 depending on where you live and how hard you look.

* Wood/lumber – Hardware store – around $20-30 depending on the exact measurements of the system, and whether your store is offering specials etc.

* Plexiglass or proper glass – Scrap piles, glazier discards – free if you can get it from a scrap pile, recycling centre or glazier discards. Otherwise the cost will be fairly low anyway.

* Tools such as saws, screwdrivers, screws, drill etc – Garage – Most people will have such tools already lying around in the garage.

* Wire – Hardware stores – Around $5-$10 for a large quantity. If you plan on building numerous solar panels then buy wire by the roll.

* Instruction manual – This will provide you with all the necessary measurements to build your solar panel, as well as images and video files of how exactly to put the components together and install them in a safe manner. You really do need to get one of these- the good news is that you can get downloadable ones over the Internet and they are not expensive (around $50, and you will also get a free copy of instructions that will show you how to build your own wind turbine)

The basic process of building your own solar panel involves-

1. Sizing up a plywood board. Next, the solar cells have to be aligned along the piece of plywood to the measurements and pattern laid out in the instruction manual.

2. Holes are then drilled in the ply and the copper wire is inserted through and attached to the cells. Another piece of ply is used to back the system and to prevent wires from sticking out.

3. One more ply piece is used to create a protruding frame around the panel, and then the glass sheet is inserted and attached securely in order to protect the delicate cells.

4. The finished system is painted and sealed, then installed and wired into your house’s electricity system as per the instruction manual (I’m not going to tell you this in words- you need pictures to do it properly and safely)

5. Enjoy saving hundreds of dollars a year from that one solar panel which, when the cost of instructions are included, will have cost you less than $200. You will never have to worry about the increasing cost of electricity again after building your own solar panel.

Click here to learn more about instructions for solar panels in your home, including how much you will need to spend, what your power bill reductions will be, as well as what the best solar instructions are.

Jeff Palmer is an economist, but has also worked in the alternative energy industry since its early days, installing and helping to develop mainly solar and wind power generation systems. Building Your Own Solar Panel – Simple Steps

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Technorati Tags: alternative, bill, bills, earth4energy, efficiency, efficient, electric, ELECTRICITY, eliminate, energy, generate, grid, home, how, off, panel, panels, power, reduce, renewable, Solar, system, technology, to, turbine, wind

Tags: alternative, bill, bills, earth4energy, efficiency, efficient, electric, ELECTRICITY, eliminate, energy, generate, grid, home, how, off, panel, panels, power, reduce, renewable, Solar, system, technology, to, turbine, wind