Looking To Learn How To Make A Solar Panel?

Although there are many options when it comes to implementing small scale renewable energy systems, solar power has become the most popular among them. The reason behind this is simple and it lies with the fact that solar power systems are relatively easier to implement on a residential level. Access to necessary components has definitely become easier for the average joe through the years such that even a novice could actually learn how to make solar panels and do it right inside a garage or a personal workshop using basic carpentry and electronic tools.

If you wish to save a lot of money and stay away from paying expensive solar power contractors to install a system for your home, you can opt choose to learn and implement it yourself. There are a ton of resources online but there are 2 basic ways you can go about learning how to build solar panels to provide electricity for your home: the paid way and the free way.

(Already done with your solar panel project? Tie it up to the grid and sell electricity back to your utility provider using a grid tie inverter!)

Paid Guides

One of the most popular paid tutorial is the Earth4Energy program which is an online downloadable resource that provides adequate education on how to put together an efficient solar or wind energy system for residential or personal installations. It teaches you how to build solar panels and create a home that is powered by sunlight. It also includes lessons on how to harvest energy from the wind which makes it quite a valuable guide for home and business owners looking to join the cleaner and greener movement by reducing fossil fuel consumption and save money in the process. There are many other paid resources out there and I’m in the process of putting together a list to provide more options for researchers.

If you’re the old-fashioned type who loves books then you would probably like getting the 2011 edition of the Solar Energy Handbook: A Simple Practical Guide to Solar Energy – Designing and Installing Photovoltaic Solar Electric Systems by Michael Boxwell which you could order from Amazon or any similar book which you could probably get from any bookstores (online or otherwise).

Free Guides

Now, the Internet being the ultimate information sharing tool ever created, there’s bound to be something floating out there that will give you information you can use for some DIY learning without having to spend anything, right?. Indeed there are! In fact, if you’ve started looking around I’m sure you already have stumbled on the most popular ones. One good example is this DIY solar panel tutorial page made by Mike Davis which provides step-by-step instructions (with pictures to boot) on how to build a solar panel from scratch using rudimentary tools and relatively inexpensive components that you could buy off eBay. His latest update on the page shares how he’s doing with a DIY solar tracking platform that he’s creating for his solar panel using a vintage antenna rotator which I think is pretty cool.

Another free guide you can check out is Joe’s step-by-step solar panel building guide. Joe gives very detailed information and is ideal for the techno geeks. What’s even better about this guide is that it also provides information on where you can get the items that you will need to make solar panels right in your own home.

Relative Advantages: Free vs. Paid

One problem with free tutorials on how to make solar panels is that there is implied condition that they will not really be able to provide a comprehensive guide that will answer 100% of your questions. In fact, Mike Davis, on his page, explicitly states that disclaimer. If you follow his guide and stumbles on a roadblock or a problem that gets you stuck, there is no guarantee that he will be able to help you with it when you go email him. Otherwise, these free guides should be able to provide most of the basic information you need to jump start your journey into renewable energy through the use of electricity-producing solar panels.

The paid guides, on the other hand, will be better in this respect as they are most certainly be required to answer all your project-related queries because you paid them for it.

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