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How To Make Your Own Solar Panels For Homes

admin — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 10:00:33 +0000

You can make your own solar panels for homes. Apart from lower initial investment, you can enjoy lower utility bills. During winters, you will will also not suffer from incredibly expensive energy bills.

A commercial solar panel system can easily cost you upwards of $20,000 to $30,000. Systems that cost $70,000 are also not uncommon. A homemade solar panels system costs only a fraction of this price, depending on how good you are at sourcing for components.

With a lower outlay, it also means your payback period can be drastically reduced. Instead of waiting for more than 15 years before your solar panels give you a return on your investment, you can perhaps achieve this in less than 10 years.

To power your entire house, you’ll need to have an array of solar panels. This means several solar panels must be grouped together. Only then can the total power required for your household equipment and lighting needs be supplied.

Each solar panel can be built in a weekend if you know how to. Therefore if you want about 10 solar panels for your PV panels array, you must be prepared to spend up to ten weekends constructing them. However you’ll almost always use less time than this. Simply because you’ll get much faster as you get more practice.

In order to learn how to make your own solar panels for your home, you’ll need to first acquire some knowledge on these areas:

1. How to tab solar cells
2. Securing solar cells to the substrate
3. How to choose a suitable material for your substrate
4. Making a solar panel frame
5. Which types of glazing to choose for your solar panel frame
6. How to waterproof your solar panel
7. What types of connectors to use for solar panels
8. How to make an inverter
9. Connecting your solar panels to the inverter and calculating the wire requirement
10. Sizing your solar panel system
11. How to install solar panels

If you have a friend who has an extensive experience building and installing solar panels for their own home, you can tap on his expertise. Otherwise you can always find guidebooks to help you.

Good guides are filled with step-by-step instructions on how to build each solar component. Not only this, they should have many illustrations and even videos that give you a good feel on how to carry out each instruction.

Guides are definitely a must when it comes to building your own solar panels. This is true even if you consider yourself a DIY expert. There are many “shortcuts” pertaining to building a solar energy system that you won’t want to miss.

Having said this, it doesn’t mean you must do everything yourself. You can pick those tasks that you love doing and leave the rest to a professional.

For example, you may enjoy building solar panels but hate pulling cables on your roof to install those panels. You can simply pick up the phone and ask for a quotation. Anyway, having built your own PV panels, you’ll already have saved a lot of money. Spending a little for installation won’t burn a hole in your pocket.

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Homemade Solar Panels — Common Mistakes to Take Note Of When Building And Installing Photovoltaic (PV) Panels

admin — Fri, 20 Jan 2012 09:59:36 +0000

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.

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Used Solar Panels – How To Use Them To Build Cheap DIY Solar Panels

admin — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 10:00:05 +0000

You can build cheap DIY solar panels by salvaging parts from used solar panels. The end result can be very fulfilling. Many hobbyists remarked that they spent only a fraction of what it would otherwise cost them had they bought a comparable solar power system.

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.

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How To Make Your Own Solar Panels For A Car

admin — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 09:59:54 +0000

You can easily make your own solar panels and create many applications for a car. Here, we’ll how you how to do this.

Since the primary voltage used in an automobile is 12 volts, the solar panel you build will most likely be of this rating.

There are a few items you need to purchase in order to make this project:

1. Solar cells
2. Silicon caulk
3. Aluminum frame
4. Perspex cover
5. 2-gauge wires
6. Soldering iron
7. A piece of substrate

You can either use broken cells or new/used ones. What I recommend (if you have the budget) is to use new PV cells. This is because you’ll get the most power. Since an automobile doesn’t have a lot of surface area, you need more power per square feet for your PV panel.

First, you have to position the solar cells on the substrate to make sure you’ve got your spacing correct. Next, check that the PV cells are orientated according to the correct polarity.

Once this is done, you can flip the cells and start soldering them. Use 2-gauge wires or tabbing wires so the electrical resistance is as low as possible. After this, put the cells under the sun and test to see if you’re getting the correct voltage and current output.

Then put the PV cells back on the substrate again. Row by row, put a blob of silicon caulk at the back of the solar cell. Then paste the solar cell gently on the substrate. Do not cover the entire cell with silicon caulk. Otherwise you will leave the material with little space for expansion and contraction. When sufficient stress builds up in the material (glass), it may crack.

You’ll usually have to wait at least 24 hours for the silicon caulk to dry completely. Otherwise it will leave deposits at the Perspex surface. This will hinder sunlight from entering the solar panel.

Immediately after pasting your solar cells, you may want to take some time to waterproof the solar panel frame. This prevents moisture and rain from entering your PV panel. Thus you’re protecting metallic connections and components from corrosion.

Finally, you can also build a small charge controller into the solar panel frame if space allows. However this depends on what you want to use your solar panel for.

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