Homemade Solar Panels
Homemade Solar Panels
Homemade Solar Panels
Homemade solar panels are starting to gain serious attention with those looking to become self
-sufficient energy-wise, or save money on their energy bills. You’ve probably seen solar cells at
work and might not have recognized them. Solar calculators have solar cells to power them.
They never need batteries, and I’ve even seen solar calculators that don’t have an off button. As
long as there’s enough light, they seem to work forever. You can harness that same technology to
power your home and save money on your electric and heating bills.
Even though professional solar panel systems can be expensive, you can always start small –
now you can build your very own functional homemade solar panels for a fraction of the cost of
professional panels and installation. You can use common tools and inexpensive and easy to
acquire materials to produce a homemade solar panel that rivals commercial panels in power
production, but completely blows them away in price.
The high-efficiency solar cells you can buy at Radio Shack and other stores are made from
highly processed silicon, and require huge factories, high temperatures, vacuum equipment, and
lots of money. You can trade the factory products and manufacturing costs passed to the
consumer for the ability to make your own solar cells out of materials from the neighborhood
hardware store. It won’t take you alot of time either — you can make a working solar cell in
about an hour.