Home Built Solar Panel
how can i build my own, cheap, Solar Panels at home?
i need to cut down on electricity bills, and so i was wondering if someone could give me step-by-step instructions, or websites that have step-by-step instructions on how to build an electricity generating Solar Panel.
The idea behind building your own was to get defective and broken Solar Cells from the manufacturer, preferably for free though many now charge for them. These are cells that are either cosmetically blemished, cracked or otherwise broken during manufacturing and transportation.
As each cell fragment could have very different voltage and current characteristics, you have to manually measure the voltage and current characteristics, sort them and then wire them in parallel or in serial to achieve the desired voltage and current characteristics for the panel. Wiring in parallel increases the current while wiring in series increases the voltage, the current capacity of cells in series will be that of the lowest current capacity cell in that series hence you need to match fragments up to wire in parallel till you have enough current capacity to participate as a cell in the series. Cell fragments can only be wired in parallel if they have the same voltage output. It’s painstaking work and it’s difficult to place all the irregular shaped cells onto the solar panel in a layout that efficiently uses the space so your solar panels will likely be much larger than commercial ones. You could augment them with Fresnel lenses since the cells don’t occupy as much of the available surface area hence focusing the light onto the cells rather than the board will help with efficiency. Practice your soldering skills cause you don’t want to have to go back in to figure out where that cold solder joint is. If you’re real lucky you can get a supply of blemished cells but the cheapest ones are the broken cells.