Posts Tagged Solar Energy For The Home

A Do It Yourself Home Improvement Energy Saver Is The Solar Power Panel

Posted by outside_voices on Saturday, 2 January, 2010

A solar power panel to power up appliances at home can be pretty expensive if you are purchasing everything from a retailer. It is important to realize you can reduce the overall cost by making your own solar power panel. You certainly will not feed enough power into your home to run everything with just one solar power panel that is homemade, but you can easily power up some appliances requiring electricity. An added benefit to the homemade solar power panel is that you can take it anywhere with you.

If you search online stores and around at hardware stores, you can easily find the bulk of the materials. This first thing you will need to make your solar power panel is a solar panel that is rated at 16 volts. Keep your eyes open for rechargeable batteries because you will need a battery. A deep cycle 12 volt lead/acid or gel battery is ideal when you want to make a solar power panel and you cannot use a car battery.

To get the most life out of the solar power panel and make sure it is a safe system, you should get a battery case which can protect the terminals. Check out the prices for both a DC input and a 12 volt DC meter as they are pretty common and cheap too. While most inverters can be expensive, you can find cheap inverters out there to use if you want to power AC appliances.

Using a drill to attach the meter and input on the top of the battery box, you can begin making your solar power panel. With insulated wire and using the negative pole on the battery, you will attach the battery to the DC input. Next connect the solar panel to the battery and close the battery box to have a working solar panel. To build solar panels is an easy step by step process.

Its Green DIY Energy

The remainder of the process is charging the battery. Place the solar panel out in the sun and let the battery charge then you can begin to use the solar panel. You will have to wait for about 6 to 7 hours of charging time for the battery before it can charge your appliances. You can use this simple process to make a bigger solar power panel with bigger panels and batteries. This will give you the ability to feed power longer and to more appliances with green DIY energy.

One of the best aspects of a DIY solar power system is that you get to choose exactly what goes into the system. You are in complete control of each decision ranging from the overall cost, the number of solar panels you have and which brand you end up buying. You will not have to shell out a lot of money for an electrician to do the work and you will control the entire project yourself. You may wind up rolling up your sleeves to do the heavy lifting, but you will also save hundreds maybes thousands of dollars by doing it yourself. A DIY solar power system is absolutely the most cost effective way of getting your home hooked into solar power and off of the power grid.