With electricity costs rising more and more each year, a lot of people are thinking in investing into solar panels for their home to cut down on the costs and to reduce their carbon footprint. While commercial solar panels are a great idea, they tend to cost quite a bit of money. With that in mind, we found a few more affordable solutions in which you can create your own solar panels.
A key component in making your own panels is to decide whether or not you'll build a tracker, which will orient your panels toward the sun. This will generate anywhere between 30 to 60% more electricity. Rob Patto's LED Solar Tracker is definitely interesting, but it will complicate your overall build. Although most people would simply like to place solar panels on their roofs, the best way would be to use an LED tracker and mount the panels in your backyard so that they can track the sun for most of the day.
The DIY Solar Setup
Rob Patto put together an informative guide about how he built a 12V solar setup, which is powerful enough to run an air conditioner and a fridge/freezer during the cooler months. When you are considering building your own panels, you need to carefully consider materials. It's easy to try and do things cheaply, but in the end it won't last as long. There are commercially available boards that are used for mounting pre-tabbed solar cells. Dupont makes some and they're called Tedlar. He recommends an eBay seller named Fred480V, who is from the US and has all sorts of supplies for building your own panels. In his opinion, by choosing the best materials available, your DIY panel will cost about half of what a commercial solar panel costs. It's definitely something to consider if you want to save money.
Once you have the panels and the solar cells, it's time to solder the cells together. You have to be very careful with this, as the whole solar panel is only as strong as its worst soldered connection. If you're not familiar with soldering, we'd recommend a friend to help you out. You can check out his full guide here and his blog for more information about how to build your own panels.
The Home-Made Solar Panels
This is a similar build to Rob's, however it uses glass as a way to mount the solar cells. The solar cells were soldered and then glued to the glass. The glass will serve as a back panel. The solar cells are sandwiched between two glass panes. The panel needs to be sealed and vapoured out. A junction box was placed in the back of the panel.
Each of these panels costs about $260 to make by yourself. You can check out this guide and there's more information available here.
[photos via Tegolasolare, Rob Patto, Home Build Solar System]
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Any word on how the efficiency compares to a decent commercial rig?
Hmmm....from that DIY site:
"the panels are working fine and [...] give so far an average of 500Wh per week". That translates to 2kWh / month.
From http://www.peterboroughutilities.ca/Electric/Energy_Conservation/Electricity_Usage_in_the_Home.htm :
Clock: 4kWh / month
So if I'm reading this correctly, one of these DIY rigs can power one clock for 2 weeks per month? Pretty steep for that kind of output.
Yeah, think about it. If he's only getting 500Wh/week, that's a 100W light bulb for 5 hours a week. That's nothing. That's a hair dryer for 15 minutes, clothes dryer for maybe 10. Might as well just hook a dynamo up to an exercise bike and get a bit of a workout for half an hour a day.
Also, all creators of ostensibly "green" projects must consider the embodied energy of not only the panels, but also the power inverter, the frame, all the other little bits and pieces involved. No doubt, the embodied energy of this project is more than will be produced in it's lifetime. Maybe that's OK. Maybe this was just meant to be a fun DIY project and a learning experience. But the intended purpose and the actual results must always be taken into account.
Slightly OT, but speaking of ostensibly "green" projects, there's a new condo building here in Chicago which has several vertical strips of PV panels along the top. Great, that'll contribute a bit of power and offset the building's load, right? Well, sure, and certainly it's mentioned in the brochure. However, they will never offset the embodied energy. The glazing was made by a German company. The glazing was then shipped to Japan where the PV panels were bonded to the glazing. The assembly was shipped back to Germany where the second lite of glazing was added and sealed and the whole thing (along with the rest of the glazing curtain wall system) was shipped to Chicago.
All I'm saying is greenwashing is rampant and troublesome and a little critical thinking and research is needed to move beyond greenwashing into real environmental progress.
I totally agree with the previous posters re: "embodied energy" and "greenwashing" and whatnot. I was going to make a similar comment on a post I saw either here or on Kitchn yesterday about the "portable garden service" in LA. The whole thing irritates me on a number of levels. But, I decided not to comment because I decided to be hopeful and assume that the people who started there would be inspired to do something "real" down the road. I've tried to take a similar attitude with projects like this and the Chicago building Charmac mentioned. Maybe it won't in itself ever pencil out, but hopefully it's role as a showpiece is fulfilled and inspires some people to go on and do things that will.
let me say that I completely understand the point by prior posters about embodied energy etc. but I feel it's important to remind people that "right now it's not about economy, it's about ecology". A couple of points here.
A) Every new technology starts out expensive, and only economies of scale and broad development bring it to the point where they are affordable and efficient as well.
B) We are trying to wean ourselves off fossil fuels to renewable energy. Sure the energy from this solar panel is expensive compared to fossil fuels - Oil is cheap right now - but when oil and natural gas starts getting really scarce and spikes to $150-$300/barrel this will be a bargain. If we put as much development into these technologies as has gone into internal combustion etc. then we will eventually be able to supplant much of that oil. Think about this: how many horsepower was the original Model T vs. the current Mustang?
C) The byproduct of these technologies is: a lack of byproducts. The environment gets better, less smog, less asthma, less damage to us and our surroundings. That requires innovation and investment.
"C) The byproduct of these technologies is: a lack of byproducts."
So I suppose when you upgrade to a real set of solar panels these ones just vanish into thin air? Evaporate into a cloud of good feelings and kittens? Keep in mind that this token attempt at solar power will be sitting in a landfill for a very long time.