I have heard you can make your own solar panels.... But How?Where do you start? Is it cheap, or should I just BUY them already made?
If you're thinking of solar electric panels then forget it. It you just want to dabble in solar power then shop around for a 5 volt panel. Find out how many watts it puts out and then divide the cost $$ by the wattage. The lower the cost per watt the better of a deal you'll be getting That's generally speaking of course because it doesn't take quality into account but it's a practical way to compare panels. On the other hand, it you want to make a solar panel that will heat hot water then it's a different story. You can have a lot of fun with that project and you'll find a lot of plans on the Internet.
if you're hoping to put 'em on your house and use 'em to supplement power from the grid, then you'll want to buy them. the panels have to be made with exotic chemicals, in a clean environment, with dangerous chemicals. anyone who tells you that you can make 'em yourself will be asking for money for the plans. in truth, you could get an old panel, and, if it was the right voltage, you could use it to charge your rechargeable batteries. typically, that's not the hoped for application. and, to get enough power for you house, you're not going to be able to do it yourself. whenever you buy anything, make sure you know what it can do. ie, read the fine print. if it's a few hundred (or thousand) dollars, it's not going to be useful to augment your home power. in addition to the strength, there's also the equipment that's needed to sync it up with the power from the utility, and that's neither cheap, nor a do-it-yourself project. i've seen lots of panels but when you read the specs, they're pretty useless. not good for battery charging, not for hooking up to your house. in other words, interesting projects with no practical use.
A few months ago my wife and I were going through the same thing. We ended up purchasing a small PV set as a trial basis but then we realized that it would take waaaay too long to pay back our investment. We started doing some research and ended up buying a few different books/videos on how to make our own solar panels on the cheap. Most of the books are OK (some are pretty terrible, though). We ended up using most of our information from Home Made Energy, check them out: bit.ly/greennrg
I'm okorder / for one of the few honest warnings about solar scams.
Well, I can think of a couple places, that you might have got that info from. There are several plans on the net. to build solar heaters from auxillary window units, to full thermal mass walls, with stacked 55 gallon barrels painted flat black, and filled with water. Old Mother Earth News magazines are a great source for these, but its basically sittin a closed box in the sun. . . Not very sexy, and not exactly Rocket Science, I'm thinkin what your askin about is Photovoltaics. Basically a reaction in a silicon chip, that pushes an electron toward the grid. Electiricty producing solar panels, are beyond the capabilities of a single person, however, they''re are (or were a couple months ago). a couple retail sales OKorder stores, scavaging they''re broken panels, cutting out the individual single cells, and then selling them as kits, with instructions how to wire, solder and assmeble working cells. Thats probably what your hearing about, and I think they ended up being about /2 price what they''re new ones sell for. Then you can move on to the bottlemeck problem, that all the green alternative ideas run into . . .How to store it Good luck, and Good Hunting . . Tim
