If you’re interested in making DIY solar panels, this may be the most important place you discovered. Here’s why…

For every curiosity you have in your mind, there will almost certainly be a resource available to satisfy it.

Whether you want to build a solar panel by connecting individual photovoltaic (PV) cells or buy it retail… whether you are a do-it-yourself, homemade guy or a swear-by-a-brand person, we have mini-resources prepared for you.

Otherwise just write to us to request for it…and we’ll get it up just for you.

In the future, we’ll broaden our scope to include bits and pieces of other types of renewable energy generator like wind turbines.

For starters, you can browse the following pages to get up to speed with the DIY solar power world. Tell me what you think:

• Insider Solar Power Generator Review: 3 Most Common Mistakes Hobbyists Make on Their First DIY Solar Panel Project
• 3 Secrets You Didn’t Know About Building Solar Panels
• 1o Reasons Why You Should Build Your Own Solar Panel
• How To Build A Personal DIY Solar Power System With Less Than $99
• Build Amazing Home Solar Power Systems Used by Families Who Don’t Want to Pay For Their Utilities
• How To Build Solar Panel (Part 1 of 3)
•  How To Build Solar Panel (Part 2 of 3)
• How To Build Solar Panel (Part 3 of 3)
• Step-By-Step Guide To Build A 12V Solar Panel
• Solar Panel Battery — The Basics
  

Continue Reading:

1. Insider Solar Power Generator Review: 3 Most Common Mistakes Hobbyists Make on Their First DIY Solar Panel Project
2. 10 Reasons Why You Should Build Your Own Solar Panel
3. Build Amazing Home Solar Power Systems Used by Families Who Don’t Want to Pay For Their Utilities

This solar installation is spread across 21 sites around the county with 250 separate structures, five municipal permitting jurisdictions and three utilities. A total of 7,200 SolarWorld PV panels will be installed. They can supply the entire energy requirement at the 863-unit affordable housing. This installation can help tenants cut down their power costs tremendously.

Solar power has the potential to deliver clean, affordable energy to the hands of anyone who use it. This government-sponsored project is a clear indication that we are moving forward toward this goal, albeit slowly.

In 2010, SolarWorld and Planet Solar worked on a 100-kilowatt system together. They supplied the Housing Authority of the City of Santa Barbara with a solar power system that supplies clean energy to multi-family affordable housing.
Other than this, SolarWorld has also installed solar panels to low-income housing projects nationwide, from Tampa, Fla., to Sacramento, California.

(This news report was adapted from: Business Wire, published 18 Aug 2011)

Continue Reading:

1. 10 DIY Solar Projects You Can Build In Your Backyard This Weekend
2. Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Projects That Can Complement Solar Panels
3. How to Find Affordable Solar Panels That Last

Home Solar Power Systems

This article will paint a thirty thousand foot view of this plan and then discuss how we can implement it. Then I’ll let you in on further resources that will help you with solar energy calculations, construction and installation.

Building a home solar power system involves a few major steps:

(1) Determining the household energy requirement. This influences the number of solar cells needed to produce the required electrical energy.

Most households will not want to take their homes completely off-grid. After calculations, the majority of families seem to prefer their solar panels to bear roughly 75% of their total energy consumption.

Why do they not want their house to be totally off-grid and be 100% powered by green, renewable energy? Because there will be periods when the light intensity is insufficient. It’s during these times when we’ll need to tap into the grid again.

(2) Constructing the solar panel. The photovoltaic cells are responsible for converting solar energy into electrical energy. It is also a major cost driver. Therefore the solar panel is the most important piece of the puzzle.

If you’re on a budget, you’re able to construct a solar panel by joining broken solar cells together. If you have money to burn, buying ready-made, commercial solar panels can also be an option. These come with long warranty periods (like 25 years and beyond) and are framed in high quality aluminum.

(3) The inverter. This component converts direct current (DC) generated by the solar panels into alternating current (AC) that’s usable by your household appliances. After that, this is channeled to the power distribution box via a synchronizer so that electricity from the grid and electricity from the solar panels can be combined before each appliance in your home uses them.

(4) Installation. Obviously, we need to choose a location where there is as little shade as possible throughout the day. This is usually the roof. With proper guidance from more experienced hobbyists or a guidebook, you can fix the solar panels to your roof (or anywhere else) exactly like the professionals do.

To put all these together, you’ll need a proven plan that tells you exactly what to do — from the broad structure down to the last bolt and nut.

Continue Reading:

1. How To Build A Personal DIY Solar Power System With Less Than $99
2. Do-It-Yourself Solar Panels – Electricity Conversion From Sunlight
3. Homemade Solar Panels

This is the third and final part of the “Sizing Your Solar Energy Panels” series. Have you done some calculations for your future solar power system yet? If you have been doing those mini exercises, you’ll most likely find a suitable solar panel for your home by now.

The next step requires us to find an appropriate-sized battery bank, inverter and charge controller. Let’s look at each of these:

1. The Inverter

The inverter you choose has to be sized according to the demands of the alternating current (AC) side of the circuit. Therefore you will choose a specification according to the loads in your house (with a little buffer in case you increase your loads over time). Pretty straightforward.

2. The Charge Controller

You’ll at least need a basic charge controller to begin with. Until you get fussy about how advanced you want this component to be, more affordable models will do just fine. You’ll need to get a specification that fits the output current (Amps) of your solar panel arrays. If you intend to scale up your solar power generator, you’ll do better with a larger charge controller with room to accommodate more solar panels than with two smaller-sized ones.

3. The Battery Bank

The size of your battery bank depends on how you want to use your solar panels. You can size your battery banks such that it can get you through thick clouds that pass by, or you can size them so you can get through three solid days of solar eclipse and a power outage at the same time. It really depends on you. But take note that over-sizing isn’t always realistic. You have to take into consideration the space they occupy and the how much they’ll cost you.

If your home is grid-tied, provided there aren’t frequent power outages, the size of your battery bank isn’t critical. Just size it to take care of cloudy days will do. You can still maintain your lifestyle by drawing power from the grid.

When you design your battery bank, you’ll have less power loss (through wires) if the voltage is higher. If you are able to design a 48-volt system, you can conserve more power than when you use a 24-volt or 12-volt system.

Continue Reading:

1. DIY Solar Panels — Charge Controller Basics
2. Sizing Your Solar Energy Panels – Part 1
3. Sizing Your Solar Energy Panels – Part 2

The solar panels will be ground mounted and is the largest commercial solar array currently under development in the United States of America. By the end of this year, all the solar panels will be completely installed and will start producing power.

As agreed, Enfinity America Corporation will handle the financing of the project and co-manage the system and operations with BNB.

Campbell will purchase all the power generated by the Napoleon, Ohio system. This can satisfy about 15 percent of the plant’s annual electricity needs. With this, about a quarter million tons of carbon dioxide greenhouse gas emissions can be eliminated. This will indeed create a positive impact to the environment.

SunPower (San Jose, Calif.) was called upon to deliver the technology, procurement, and construction work for the Napoleon solar energy plant. The SunPower® [Oasis®] Tracker system will be installed.

This project is likely to create more than 200 jobs in Ohio this summer. During the first year of operation, this solar power plant can generate more than 14.7 million kilowatt hours.

“This opportunity to collaborate with Enfinity marks a great milestone in the development of BNB’s potential DG projects and ensures a successful completion and financing of the Campbell project”, said Matthew Baird, a principal and founder of BNB Renewable Energy Holdings, “The construction of this facility marks a turning point towards larger on-site renewable generation in the USA; We look forward to developing additional projects for environmentally conscious companies like Campbell.”

Rafael Dobrzynski, Enfinity’s Americas CEO, commented “Partnering with BNB means that a range of synergies and complementary skill sets have been used to bring this project to fruition. Our involvement with the Napoleon Solar project validates Enfinity’s strategy of focusing on large-scale DG installations; moreover, our deep experience with this type of solar project and ability to rapidly deploy capital means we can accelerate the pace of development and implementation. DG projects have continued to be an important part of our USA project pipeline.”
The partnership between BNB and Enfinity was established by Bostonia Partners (Boston), a financial advisor to BNB that specializes in renewable energy finance.

(This news report was adapted from: Enfinity, published 22 Aug 2011)

Continue Reading:

1. Home Solar Power — Different Ways of Harnessing Energy From The Sun To Reduce Energy Bills
2. Is Solar Energy Really Renewable and Sustainable?
3. Global Solar Energy Starts New Solar Module Operation At Berlin-Adlershof

Most portable solar power systems depend on 12-volt batteries. In our project, we’ll want everything, including the solar panels to be packed into a box.

Here is a list of things you’ll need:

1. 4 pieces of 15-watt solar panels
2. Charge controller
3. 12-volt deep cycle sealed rechargeable batteries
4. A wooden box or a briefcase
5. 4-gauge cables

Briefcase Portable Solar Power System

The first thing to work on is the container. You can either use a wooden box, a cooler box or a luggage.

Personally I prefer using an old luggage because it is easy to carry around. It also has wheels for you to drag it across a distance without using too much physical strength.

You’ll need to figure out a way to attach the batteries to the base of the container. If you are using a wooden box or a cooler box, you can simply strap it to the base using pieces of plastic strap and screws.

If you are using a luggage, you may have to use some epoxy to fix the batteries to the casing since they are usually quite thin.

Other than batteries, you will have to secure the charge controller properly. After this is done, you can connect the cables to their respective terminals.

Then pull a rubber or plastic sheet over the batteries and charge controller to prevent metallic objects from touching the terminals.

Alternatively you can get rubber sleeves to cover the terminals.

For the solar panels, you have the option of using rollable flexible solar panels. They may generate less power than the usual panels, but they are light. This makes it easy to pack a few more panels into any box.

Other than power output, you have to make sure your solar panels can fit into your casing. You may also want to attach all the panels together using small hinges or tape so the cables won’t be stressed and damaged whenever you handle them (when taking them out of the box or putting them back).

When attached together, solar panels tend to knock into one another as you handle them. Therefore you may want to put small rubber spacers between them to reduce the impact.

Finally, you need to allocate a space inside the luggage for the PV panels. If possible, make use of rubber or high-density sponge as padding to hold the panels snugly inside the box.

Such materials can also protect the solar panels from damage if you accidentally drop the portable solar panel system.

Continue Reading:

1. How To Build A Solar Panel Charge Controller
2. Lighting Up Your Yard or Garden Using Solar Energy
3. Making A DIY Solar Powered Reading Lamp

Making A Homemade Solar Power System

When building and installing homemade solar panels, there is a fair amount of trial and error involved. This forms part of your learning curve.

There are also mistakes you might make that are totally avoidable. These “detours” can discourage you especially if it is your first time building your own PV panels.

Here are some common ones to take note of when you work on your project. When you avoid them, you should arrive at a good product that is ready to serve you:

Common mistake #1: Trying to build the solar panel frame first

We have to draft out a plan for your solar panel construction. However many of those plans, as we know, often require minor tweaks. At times (although quite rare) certain designs do not work at all. We’ll learn what these are as we start building more complex PV panels.

The way to build a PV panel is to adopt an inside-out approach. First get your solar cells together on your workbench, and then cut out the substrate. After you have mounted all the solar cells on the substrate, you are now pretty sure what the dimensions of the solar panel frame must be.

You’ll be left high and dry if you have completed the frame, only to find out later it is not deep enough to contain your solar cells. Also, there is no advantage in building the solar panel frame first. Thus you’ll save yourself a lot of (potential) trouble if you can build the frame only after you have mounted the solar cells.

Having said this, people who follow proven solar panel blueprints to the tee will not be susceptible to such mistakes. Yet this is a good habit to have, since you’ll sooner or later design your own blueprints, isn’t it?

Common mistake #2: Not allowing solar cells to expand and contract

Solar Cells Expand and Contract

Solar cells expand when it’s heated by the sun and contracts when it is cold. If there isn’t sufficient consideration toward this, your solar cells will crack after some time.

By then it is a great hassle to repair this damage. You have to climb up to your roof, loosen the mounts, bring down your solar panel, open it up, do lots of testing, etc.. You know what I mean.

One important thing you must do is to mount the solar cells on a just one blob of silicon caulk. If you spread the silicon adhesive on its entire surface, you leave no room for expansion. Thus the glass structure will weaken and crack after several cycles of expansion and contraction.

Common mistake #3: Sweating the small stuff

The fact is some of us are perfectionist. This quality, even though is good on some occasions, cause many to stop dead in their tracks while making a homemade PV panel.

You know you are one when you try to do these things before your PV panel is completed:

a. Trying to sort out small blobs of glue that overflow the joints
b. Filing off burrs at inconspicuous corners
c. Worrying about how to align your wiring

Fine details can really be sorted out later. In reality, there isn’t a mistake you make that cannot be resolved. After all, making mistakes are part and parcel of learning.

The best time to make adjustments and improvements is when you have more or less completed your project and have gained more confidence. Your DIY skills will also be more polished by then.

To save time (and effort), there are also many small little parts (like brackets and mounts) that you can buy from hardware stores or specialty stores. They do not cost much. If you make these yourself, you’ll not be able to spend more time on important parts of the project.

Common mistake #4: Not wearing a certified safety harness when installing PV panels

Many folks use a piece of rope or an old harness kept away for many years. BIG mistake. If you were to fall, the joy of making your own solar panels is totally robbed. The savings will also be entirely siphoned into your doctor’s cash-lined pocket.

Beg, steal or borrow…use a certified harness to keep yourself safe.

Continue Reading:

1. Insider Solar Power Generator Review: 3 Most Common Mistakes Hobbyists Make on Their First DIY Solar Panel Project
2. Have Your FREE Bonus eBook “How To Build A Solar Panel” Emailed To You Now:
3. Building A DIY Solar Panel – My Personal Experience

Enphase Microinverters are cleverly designed such that each solar panel brings its energy production to a consolidation point in parallel. This avoids common performance issues commonly experienced by ordinary solar systems.

This design reduces the occurrence of single-point failures. It also enhances the ability to monitor and control individual solar panels. As such, system performance and reliability improves.

The Enphase Microinverter makes use of advanced digital technology to condition and control the power from each PV panel. This leads to great improvement in the overall power output. It also adds a dimension of intelligence to your PV system.

Each microinverter is networked to the Envoy Communications Gateway. This component transmits performance data and presents the consolidated information to the Internet with the help of proprietary software.

This allows your solar panels to work together as an intelligent network. It also enables you to know what is going on within the system on a whole new level. Even if you are not at home, you can connect to the Internet to know the status of your PV system if you want to.

Coping with environmental factors

Solar power output is constantly influenced by external factors such as weather, shade, dust and debris. With traditional PV panels, the lowest performing panel determines the effectiveness of your solar power system. As soon as shading occurs on just one panel, your entire solar power production attenuates considerably.

This does not happen with the Enphase Microinverter system. If any particular solar panel is shaded by leaves, the parallel energy delivery system enables full power from other panels to reach its destination. The affected PV panel drops in performance without influencing other modules.

There is yet another problem that traditional inverter systems experience. During low-light conditions such as the morning or evenings (or during thick cloud or fog cover), solar power systems effectively shut down. They require a minimum amount of power to operate efficiently. If this threshold is not reached, there is no electrical output even though your solar panels are illuminated.

Enphase microinverters circumvent this limitation with its “Burst Mode” solution. During low-light condition, each microinverter stores up trickles of energy output from the PV panel. Energy is accumulated to the point where it exceeds the minimum operating threshold before it is released to the power grid or the charge controllers.

With this, your solar panels continue to produce electricity even during low-light conditions. As a result, the efficiency of your solar energy system improves.

Quality control and reliability

Each Enphase Microinverter is manufactured based on the principles and philosophy of the Six Sigma Quality Process. Every new design and improvement is also subject to both in-house and third-party evaluations.

Each product goes through rigorous testing in the factory before they are deployed. Because of its design, each inverter’s performance can continue to be tracked even after deployment.

Industry-standard evaluations ensure us that Enphase Microinverters have a service life beyond 25 years (with over 99.7% reliability).

The 215-Series Microinverter is protected with a 25-year limited warranty while the previous generations of Enphase microinverters (like the M175, M190, M200, M210 and D380) are covered by a 15-year limited warranty. On top of that, Enphase also has a 100% Uptime Guarantee and a Rapid Replacement program that consumers can take advantage of.

Maintenance

With typical solar installations, inverter failure can result in the shutdown of the entire system. With Enphase microinverters, only the affected solar module shuts off. The impact to the solar power generator is minimal in comparison. As such, failed inverters do not necessarily require emergency repairs. Instead, they can even be replaced during the next regular maintenance.

Enphase Microinverters can be replaced with basic hand tools. Thus you do not need specialized personnel or equipment. This helps you save maintenance cost in the long run.

Continue Reading:

1. Sizing Your Solar Energy Panels – Part 3
2. Important Facts And Properties of A Solar (PV) Panel You Must Know About (Part 1 of 3)
3. Homemade Solar Panels — Common Mistakes to Take Note Of When Building And Installing Photovoltaic (PV) Panels

Before we discuss about how to do this, let’s take a look at some other ways you can improve your PV panel’s efficiency for completeness sake.

How Else To Improve Your Solar Panel Efficiency?

Many solar panels fare around 11 to 15 percent in efficiency. Better PV panels perform at an average of 16+%. With better performance, you won’t have to spend more money on PV panels. If you are using a grid-tied system, you can also offset more of your utility bills every month.

The most obvious way to improve efficiency is to change your PV panels. There are many manufacturers with different PV panel models that perform at different efficiencies.

By choosing a good PV panel, you can make sure your solar power system pumps out the required amount of electricity every season of the year. However this is not an option for those of us who have already installed arrays of solar panels on our roof.

Another way to improve solar panel efficiency is to make sure they are installed in the correct orientation. All solar panels in our country (and other parts of the globe in the northern hemisphere) have to face southward.

If this is not possible, you have to make adjustments to compensate for it. Also, the pitch and tilt of your solar panel can affect how much sunlight falls on it throughout the day.

If you have a solar tracker, it can optimize the amount of sunshine you receive on your solar panels. These devices make the PV panels face the sun squarely through the day. For small solar power systems, the improvement in electricity production may not justify the cost of a solar tracker.

If you engaged a solar professional to install your PV panels, your PV panels would already be well sited and orientated. If not, a review of your solar panel orientation can help you improve energy production.

Another way to get more electricity from your solar panels is by knowing your current shade condition. This changes, so it’ll be good for you to do an annual review. Your neighbor may have planted tall trees to use as a hedge. Or your favorite deciduous tree may have grown taller and has more branches now.

If shading occurs, the particular PV panel that is shaded may contribute to higher internal resistance for the whole system. This affect the array’s power output considerably.

Finally, in order to achieve better efficiency, you can reduce your solar panel temperature. One of the ways you can do this is through evaporative cooling.

Evaporative Cooling Methods

Evaporative cooling was used since ancient days. Egyptians hung wet mats at their doors and windows to cool the wind blowing into their homes. Throughout history, humans have attempted different ways to utilize evaporative cooling.

Today, those years of trial and error has culminated into 3 main ways of using evaporative cooling – direct evaporative cooling, indirect evaporative cooling and indirect/direct evaporative cooling.

Direct evaporative cooling involves moving warm, dry air across water. When water evaporates, the resultant energy in the air remains the same. However warm, dry air has now become cool, damp air.

Indirect evaporative cooling involves a heat exchanger so the humidity level of the air remains unchanged. Inside the heat exchanger, heat flows from the warm air to the cool air flowing inside coils of metallic tubing.

With indirect/direct methods, air is pre-cooled as it goes through a heat exchanger. Then it is cooled even more as it undergoes direct evaporative cooling. The resulting humidity in the air will not be as high as with direct evaporative cooling.

Keeping Solar Panels Cool

To cool solar panels, we will be using direct evaporative cooling. This involves the following components and materials:

1. Air blower
2. Cooler pads

If you blow cool air across your solar panels, you can take a lot of heat away. This is good. Because when solar cells are cooled, they produce more electricity.

The air blower should be installed at the bottom of the solar panel. Cooled air must be blown upwards (along the surface of your PV panels) so as to facilitate the escape of hot air as it rises.

At the air intake end, you must keep the cooler pad moist all the time. Therefore you’ll have to run a pipe to your roof and provide a consistent drip over the material.

As warm dry air moves through the damp pads, it becomes cool and wet. As it gets blown toward the surface of the PV panel, it absorbs heat and cools the solar panel. To make your solar panels cooler, blow more cool air against it so the rate of heat loss becomes greater.

Another way evaporative cooling can take place is by using a misting fan. With high pressure, water can turn into a fine mist as it goes through a very small hole. The same effect can be achieved (with far less energy) by using a simple atomizer. Small fans installed at the edge of your solar panels can transport water mist to its surface.

As tiny droplets of water evaporate, they absorb heat from the air and cool it. Since the surface area of a water mist is very large, water evaporates rapidly and lots of heat is quickly absorbed.

Evaporative cooling is most effective in hot, dry climates where water evaporates readily. During ideal conditions, evaporative cooling can bring down the air temperature by as much as about 20 degree Celsius.

A Few Considerations

In order not to block sunlight from reaching the solar cells (however little that may be), it is good to design your system to cool the underside of your PV panels, if possible. If you are using mist to cool your solar panels, droplets of water at the surface of the glass may reflect light away, reducing its effectiveness.

Water mist can be created using a piezoelectric transducer. However this would probably take up more energy than by using a simple atomizer.

With cooler solar panels, your PV panels can generate even more electricity during summer. However during winter, your cooling system gets less effective. And in order to avoid burst pipes, you must drain all water from the system.

Finally, it’ll be useful to know how much more electricity you are getting by using your PV panel cooler. This can be done by recording the power output before and after you switch on your cooling system.

Continue Reading:

1. Solar Panel Efficiency
2. Solar Panel Efficiency — How Does Dirt on Your Solar Panels Affect The Amount Of Electricity Produced?
3. How To Build A Sun Tracking Mechanism to Increase Your Solar Panel Efficiency by 40%

It takes a little skill and practice to harvest components from pre-owned or broken solar panels. Yet it is not so difficult that you cannot manage it with basic DIY skills.

You have to free the photovoltaic cells from the base it’s mounted on. After you have done this, check the solar cells for loose connections, broken panels, condensation and damaged diodes. Common problems such as these can potentially cause your solar panels to break down shortly after installation.

If the joints between solar cells are broken or loose, you have to re-solder them. Malfunctioned diodes can be replaced with new ones from your local component store. And if you see broken photovoltaic cells, you will have to source for a similar component to replace it — this can be challenging. Yet you can still make do with the broken cell in case your efforts to replace the broken solar cell fail. There will be reduced power output as a result, but this is not a grave concern.

The array of solar cells is usually mounted on a piece of masonite or acrylic (substrate) board before it is placed into a new solar panel frame. You can discard this substrate after a few years if you intend to replace the solar cells with fresh, new ones.

Using pre-owned solar panels to build DIY solar panels has its pros and cons. The most obvious advantage is the price. Used solar panels can be very cheap and some kind contractors may even give them to you without asking for a single cent. You are also less worried about breaking expensive photovoltaic panels while building your project.

On the other hand, a used solar panel’s lifespan may be significantly shorter. Their power output will also be a little lower compared to when it was new. A loose connection or a fault may hide itself somewhere that escapes your attention. As you build your DIY solar panel, trouble may spring up from these areas. However this can be managed if you’re careful in checking for potential failures.

Overall, harvesting parts from a used solar panels proof to be the best money saving method to build DIY solar panels. The only downside is the additional effort you have to put in. Yet as DIY hobbyists, we tend to take joy in such labor.

Continue Reading:

1. How To Build A Personal DIY Solar Power System With Less Than $99
2. Step-By-Step Guide To Build A 12V Solar Panel
3. How To Find Used Solar Panels