Making Your Own Solar Panel

There are a lot of considerations to take in before you start making your own solar panels and installing them on your home. The top consideration is where you you live. Now, if you live in the southwestern United States, then you probably have few worries about generating a lot of electricity with solar panels. For the rest of the country, though, you might have fewer days of sunshine throughout the year, or you might have a long winter with shorter days to contend with.

For areas that are not as ideal as southern California, such as the rest of the U.S., making solar panels is still a feasible plan of action. However, instead of generating ALL of your electricity, solar panels will probably only supplement your energy needs. For example, if you live in New York State, solar panels may be a good source of energy during the spring and summer, but during the shorter days of winter, you may need energy from the power copany to meet your needs.

The map in this module details the level of sunlight different areas in the U.S. receive.

In addition to the area you live in, you need to take a look at your home itself. Ideally, for a solar panel power system to be effective, it should face in a southerly direction. Also, any amount of shade on your panels will hinder your system's ability to generate electricity.

The space you have available to install solar panels is also another big part of the decison making process. Depending on where you live, you may need many panels to completely cover the cost of your home's electricity use. If you have a large roof, then you probably have no worries. If you live in a smaller house, then your ability to place solar panels on your home may be limited.
Unfortunately, there are many, many factors that need to be considered when deciding how many panels to install.

To find out more on making your own solar panels, including how to determine how many panels you need, go to Power 4 Home

Just the fact that you are here exploring the merits of generating your own electricity shows that there is interest out there for people to create their own energy independence. Here are two big reasons why you might want to make your own solar panel power system:

Increased Energy Costs

Have you noticed that your electric bill gets larger and larger every year? While it's not a drastic increase in costs from year to year, the increase in rates is far outpacng inflation. We keep hearing from energy experts who all claim that energy prices are just to keep on climbing higher and higher, and that there's not a whole lot that we can do about it. Wrong! By making your own solar panels, you can effectively side-step this growing problem, and significantly reduce - or eliminate!- your electricity bill!

"Green Energy"

Now, this is a term that almost everybody is familiar with these days. It simply refers to producing energy in a way that is not harmful towards the environment.

We have all heard about climate change, our dependence on foreign oil and other "calls to action" that are growing louder every day. Makng your own solar panels is an awesome way to support these ideals. Think about it: if every house had solar panels on the roof, and was producig about about 80% of their electricty needs that way, how much carbon do think we could prevent from entering the atmosphere?

So, those are the two big reasoons that I think we should get started making and installing solar panel powers systems in our homes.

Are you ready to learn how to make these solar panels yourself? A great resource for that is at Power 4 Home

As I am doing my research on solar panels, and hopping from site to site, I am seeing this question come up more and more. More often than not, I see that most answers leave the reader scratching their head and do not give a whole lot of relevant information.

The reason for this is that electric usage varies greatly from one household to another, and many households differ significantly from the national "average".

How many solar panels you need depends mainly on how much electricity you use. Here's a list of all the factors that determine how many panels your home will need:

Average electrical usage

Your climate, how many days of sunshine you haveThe angle of your roof

How much shade is present on your roof

These are the main things that need to be consiered when making your own solar panels. The easiest way to figure all of this up is to look at your electric bill.

On your bill, you will see an average usage per day number. You need to do some math and figure out how many watts you use per hour. For example, let's say you have come up with the number of 500 watts per hour.

Solar panels come in a variety of ratings such as 200 watt, 100 watt, etc. The rating of the solar panel indicates how much electricty that panel will create during one hour of peak sunlight. So, if your home uses 500 watts per hour of electricity on average, 5 100 watt panels would cover your energy needs during peak sunlight.

If you are making your own solar panels, you'll need to test your panels to determine the wattage output of each panel. For detailed instructions on how to do this, go to Power 4 Home