Power Plans

On your quest for energy independence, you’ve undoubtedly considered using solar energy to lower your electric bills. That’s GREAT! It’s an excellent way to get your feet wet with green power, and it’s also very easy to build your own solar panels. You’ll be joining thousands of other people that are starting to explore alternative energy via the solar power route.

Before you jump in, there are a few basic items you’ll need to construct an electricity generating solar panel. You should be have some basic hand tools such as a saw, drill, hammer, tape measure, screw drivers, caulking gun, paintbrushes. You don’t need to be an expert since all you’ll need to do is build a basic ‘box’ to house your solar cells.

Along with the previously mentioned carpentry tools, another thing you should have is a multimeter. This will be used for checking output voltages of your solar cells and your finished solar panel. It doesn’t have to be a digital multimeter, an analog multimeter will work fine. As long as your meter can read DC voltages within the range of 0 to 20 volts or so, you should be fine.

You’ll also need a soldering iron or gun, and some rosin core solder. Any general purpose rosin core solder will be fine, you don’t need any exotic formulation and you should be able to pick this up at your local big box retailer. While it isn’t absolutely necessary, it can save you time and frustration if you get a flux pen. This will make it much easier to solder your tabs and buss wires.

You’ll also need some tabbing wire or ribbon. This is used to connect the individual solar cells together. It’s a wide ribbon type wire that’s flat and much easier to use than typical solid or stranded wire.

Finally, and most importantly, you’ll need some solar cells. Now there may be several different places you can acquire them, there are a few issues you should consider. First, lets think about the free route. As you’re probably aware, the most cost effective way to build a solar panel is to find some free solar cells. They are the most expensive part of building a solar panel. If you can find free cells to use in your panel, you’ll greatly reduce, or possibly even eliminate your costs. That said, it’s not always possible to find cells for free, or even practical - especially if you don’t have enough to complete a whole panel. So before you decide to use free cells that you may have acquired, make sure you have enough of them to make a worthwhile panel.

As a test, in direct sunlight, measure the output voltage of each of the cells. Generally, if they’re from the same source, they’ll all have a similar output voltage. Now, since you’ll be wiring up these cells in series, to find the final voltage using ohm’s law, you’ll add the individual voltages. For instance, if your cells generate .5 volts each, and you’ve got 20 of them, you’ll be able to produce 10 volts of electricity. The available output current will be based on the physical size of the solar cells - larger cells yield more current. With free cells, you won’t necessarily know how much current you’ll be able to generate until you’ve wired up the cells and measured the current flow.

If you’re going to buy solar cells, there are also a few things to consider. There’s a lot written about how cheap it is to buy chipped and broken cells. And while this is often true, the recent rise in popularity of building home made solar panels has caused the prices to increase. The only disadvantage, is the odd shapes that you’ll get.

One advantage to buying whole, non-broken cells is that they’re uniformly sized. When laying out your panel, it’s much easier mounting and wiring up the cells when they’re whole pieces, versus randomly sized and shaped pieces. Personally, I’m a stickler for details and prefer to build panels that look good and uniform. Just remember though that looks have little to no effect on the capabilities of the panel. You can get results that are every bit as good using broken cells and you can using whole cells. It all comes down to the economics of your situation.

Finally, you’ll need to know how to build a solar panel. Whether you’ve found some tips on the internet, or are interested in buying a set of diy wind and solar power plans, you’ll need to know the details involved with building a cost effective and productive solar panel that will generate a useful amount of electricity.

That’s basically all you’ll need to build your own panel. It’s easy, it’s fun, it’s useful, and you’ll probably learn a lot in the process. Be careful, pay attention to details, have fun.

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