Build Cheap Solar Panels at Home

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In the last post, I discussed about solar panels, their technology, types, constructions and what type of solar panel best suits for generating electricity at home. Refer back to my previous post Solar Panels for Home which helps you decide the type of solar panels to use at home. This post is all about learning the cheapest way to make electricity at home.

Build Solar panels at home instead of buying

Before considering to utilize solar energy to generate electricity at your home, you should consider few things before implementing solar energy system. If your budget for installing this solar energy system is in few thousand dollars, then you should buy solar panels. Or if you want to save few thousand dollars and want to build this solar energy system in as less price as possible, then you should definitely take the ‘Do-it-Yourself’ approach. This DIY approach involves building your own Solar panels at home using materials available in the market.

The DIY approach will save a lot of money, plus will give the same energy output as a manufactured solar panel of the same rating.  Building solar panels is really easy process and doesn’t require any knowledge apart from a good manual. If you like to build solar panels on your own, you can call your local electrician to help you install Solar panels on the roof. However doing the complete process on your own will prove to be much cheaper, more fun and you will be assured of the quality of work.

Ways to Build Solar Panels at Home using DIY Apporach

Now there are two options for ‘Do-it-yourself’ method. The first involves you to build the solar panel from scratch which includes buying materials from the market, molding and designing them in the correct shapes and then assembling them by hand.  The second method is much easier than the first. You will need to buy readymade/ manufactured panels which are in pieces and will only need to assemble and install them. Among these two methods, people prefer to use the second way as it requires less work than first.

Also you should not forget that the solar panels which are supposed to install on your home’s roof needs to be tough. Readymade solar panels are extremely tough and are made to withstand heavy pressures. This factor is extremely important when considering weather. If homemade solar panels are not made considering the possible impact of weather then they might not survive harsh weather conditions which is not uncommon these days.

For building Solar panels at home, you will need a guide. A good do-it-yourself guide can make the journey of making solar panels to installing a fun and memorable. There are lots of guides out in the market, but not all deliver as they promise. Being an Electrical Engineer, I discovered that most of the guides have poor information of electrical connections which might lead to short circuits in your home.

To make this process easy for you, I have selected a couple of best Do-it-Yourself guides which are probably the best. These guides also consider weather impact on solar panels and include better solutions to prevent against weather mishaps.

1. Earth4Energy

This Guides is definitely among the best DIY guide in the market. They have a manual plus video tutorial lessons showing precise steps to build solar panels at home.  It is definitely a recommend guide to have if you wish to make electricity at home using solar panels and wind turbines.

Ways to Make electricity at home using Solar Panels by DIY

Click the image to Visit the Official website of Earth4Energy

Click on the image or here to visit the Official Website of Earth4Energy.

2. Build you own Solar Panel – Amazon

This Guide only has manual with pics. No video lessons. The manual is pretty good but not having video lessons does decrease your chances to understand the installation and construction fully.

3. If you have opted for buying solar panels then you will need an installation manual.


Select the best manual, DIY guide for yourself and enjoy the process of making your own solar panels.

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Energy from Wind Turbines

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In this Article I will talk about Wind Turbines, how they generate Electricity and how they can help us to produce over 60% of Electricity at home.

Wind Turbines are mechanical devices which converts Kinetic Energy of the wind into Mechanical Energy which is then converted into Electrical Energy (Electricity) using a generator. Because of its simple operation, wind turbines are used to produce Electricity on Mega Watts scale and are called as Wind Power Plants.

Wind turbines as Ways to make electricity at home

There has been a huge research and development of Wind Turbines. Nowadays wind turbines are manufactured having vertical and horizontal axis. Wind Power Plants which generates megawatts of power daily big turbines to produce and utilize the complete power of wind.  They may have hundreds of Turbines working to fulfill the energy demand of nearby city.

Wind Power as we know, is renewable, clean, available everywhere, green, produce zero greenhouse gases and thus it is considered an Alternate to Fossil Fuels. All these advantages of wind power have boost the use of wind turbines for producing power on large scale and also on a residential level. This Clean Energy has benefited our grid and its ability to supply power to ever increasing load.

Surely by using Wind Power, we can reduce our dependency on Fossil fuels to provide Power and it also helps reducing Global Warming which is a very serious issue we are facing.

As stated, there are 2 Types of Wind Turbines which are classified on their axis of rotation (design).

  1.     Horizontal Axis Wind Turbines.

The Horizontal Axis Wind Turbines have the Main Rotor shaft and the Electrical Generator (which is used to convert mechanical energy from the rotating turbines into Electrical energy) at the top of a tower, which is pointed in the direction of Wind.  Large turbines needs a wind sensor and Servo motor while small turbines utilize a simple wind vane to get pointed in the direction of wind for maximum Energy production.

A tower is used to host the generating (rotating unit plus the generator).

Most of the turbines used for producing Electricity at power plants are usually 3 bladed and are pointed into the wind by using Computer controlled Motors (Servo Motors to produce Step rotation).

These types of Turbines are also used at home to produce Electricity. Usually the Residential wind turbines are smaller in size, require less space and easy to install.

Generate Electricity from Wind Turbines at Home walks you through more details.

Below are some recommendations of Residential wind turbines.

 

Choose the one that suits your needs Best.

          2.      Vertical Axis Wind Turbines.

In Vertical axis wind turbines, the rotor shaft arrangement is in vertical position. The key advantage of this turbine design is non-requirement of servo motor or wind vane to point wind turbine in the direction of wind. This is the major advantage in places where the direction of wind is highly uncertain.

The Major disadvantage is lower efficiency due to its low rotational speed eventually having low power coefficient.

As wind turbines are very effective in producing Electricity, many people are using Residential Wind Turbines to Make Electricity at Home.

I suggest you to buy wind turbines from the above mentioned with suitable power rating matching your desired Electricity needs.

 

 Installation Guide.

A proper installation guide is extremely important for installation of Wind turbines.

I found this amazing guide on Amazon which shows walk you through complete details on building 1500 Watts Wind Turbine. They will provide you with the Wind Turbines plus will guide you in the installation process. Its definitely recommended.

 

Solar Panels for Home

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Solar Panel which is also called as Photovoltaic panels or PV panels are packaged of internally connected assembly of Photovoltaic cells. An Array of Solar panels connected together as a unit which may also be called as photovoltaic system can be easily used to Generate Electricity for homes, buildings and public lights. The electricity generate is also used for Commercial purposes.  Solar Panels to Make Electricity at Home

The Output of each Solar panel is DC (Direct Current) and is rated according to its output capacity ranging from 80 Watts to 350 Watts. Solar Panels of the same rating might vary in efficiency thus their size depends upon their efficiency in converting Solar Rays (sunlight) into Electricity.

As a single Solar Panel can only produce output (Electricity) based on its rating which is not adequate to power a house alone, almost all solar installation have more than 1 solar panel. Thus increasing the capacity and redundancy of the system.  A Solar power system mainly consist of an array of Solar panels, inverter to convert generate DC power into AC power which is used by Devices in home, and Battery to store electricity generate during day time for its utilization during night.

As we know, Solar panels uses Sun Energy (photon) to generate Electricity through the photvoltaic effect, Solar panels are equipped with Solar Cells which are used to collect Solar Energy (photons), converted them into Electricity (DC) via the Photovoltaic effect then transfer the generate electricity to be stored in the Battery for further use. The Majority of Solar panels use wafer based crystalline silicon cells or thin film cells made from cadmium telluride or silicon. There are many types of Solar panels in use, they utilize the appropriate solar cells configuration and structure.

Solar panel system is a proven way to make Electricity at Home. There are many variations of Solar panels thus making it really easy to chose the necessary type of solar panel to be installed. For home installation, many prefer to use Roof Mounted Solar panels. This genre of Solar panels are specially made considering local in-house use. As our Aim is to Generate Electricity at Home, we will prefer to use Roof Mounted Solar Panels as they are best suited for our needs. If you don’t want to install solar panels on your roof, then there are other variations of Solar panels which can be used.

The cost of Solar panels largely depends upon the desired output for a day. If the desired output is 500 Watts, there can be 2 solar panels with rating of 250 Watts each or 1 of 300 watts and other of 200 Watts.

Here are some Solar panels best suited for Residential use.

Now, this Solar panel has Rating of 180 Watts which is quite good at a price for $396.

 

As discussed earlier, depending upon your desired output, you should buy the relevant solar panel(s).

 

Renewable Energy Sources

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The World presently depends intensely on coal, petrol, and natural gas for the power. Fossil fuels are non-renewable, which is, they utilize set

Ways to Make Electricity at Home using Solar Energy

assets which will ultimately fade away, growing very expensive as well as far too environmentally risky to obtain. On the other hand,

the a number of Renewable Energy Sources such as wind power and also solar energy-are continuously replenished that will by no means come to an end.

 

The majority of renewable energy occurs both directly as well as in some way from the sun. Sun energy, or solar energy, can be utilized straight away for heating system together with illuminating houses along with buildings, for producing electrical power, and also for domestic hot water heating, solar cooling, together with a range of business and industrialized applications.

 

The sun’s heat normally maintains the Winds, whose energy, is collected with wind turbines. Subsequently, the winds along with the sun’s heat stimulate water to evaporate. After this water vapor turns to rainfall or even snow and runs downhill into rivers as well streams, the power often is collected employing hydroelectric power.

Together with the rainfall and snow, sun energy allows plantation to evolve. The organic and natural matter that makes up those plants and flowers is termed biomass. Biomass are useful to generate electricity, transport fuels, or even chemical compounds. The usage of biomass for just about any of these kinds of reasons is named Bioenergy.

Hydrogen can also be located in most organic compounds, and also water. It’s the utmost widely available element on the planet. However it doesn’t appear purely in the form of a gas. It’s constantly mixed with some other elements, for instance with oxygen to create water. When set apart from the other element, hydrogen could very well be burned just as a fuel as well as transformed into electricity.

Renewable Energy Source to Generate Electricity

 

Not every alternative energy sources are derived from the sun. Geothermal energy utilizes the Earth’s inner temperature for many different applications, which include electricity generation, in addition to the heating and cooling of buildings. Also energy of the ocean’s tides are derived from the gravitational pull of the moon as well as sun upon the Earth.

 

In reality, ocean energy arises from a variety of resources. In conjunction with tidal energy, there’s the energy of the ocean’s waves, that happen to be related to both the tides winds. The sun additionally warms the surface area of the ocean a lot more than the ocean depths, developing a temperature variation which can be used in the form of a power resource. Each one of these varieties of ocean energy are useful to Generate Electricity.

Generate Electricity at Home

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Generate Electricity at Home using Solar Panels and Wind Turbines as a Unit.

 

In this post i will explain how you can Generate Electricity at home using combined unit of Solar panels and Residential Wind Turbines. As discussed in earlier posts, we need to have a Generating unit which can generate over 500 watts of Electricity to fulfill over 50% – 60% of our daily Electricity requirements. This can be achieve easily if we utilize the combined power of Solar and Wind energy using solar panels and wind turbines at our home.

Generate Electricity at Home

Solar Panels and Wind Turbines being used to Produce Electricity at Home

Before moving on with learning how to install both these power as one unit, i advice you to read my previous posts on Solar panels and Wind turbines mentioned below. However if you already know how to produce Electricity from Solar panels and Wind turbines then you can skip it.

 1. Ways to Generate Electricity at Home using Solar Panels.

 2. Generate Electricity at home using Wind Turbines.

Now from here i assume you have a basic knowledge of Solar panels and Wind turbines and realize them as the most relevant ways to make Electricity at Home.

* I will try not to mention the Engineering behind Electricity generation from solar panels and wind turbines. I always Aim to make my posts extremely easy to be followed by people without Electrical  Engineering degree :-) If you want a detailed explanation of the Engineering behind Energy Generation, send me a mail and i will be extremely happy to explain it to you. 

Now back to the Topic -

How to Generate Electricity at Home using Solar Panels and Wind turbines as one Unit.

Combining Solar Panels and Wind Turbines to Generate over 500 Watts of Electricity is EASY.

We already know the Individual ways to Generate Electricity at Home using Solar Panels and Wind turbines. We now just need to combine their individually generated Electricity, Synchronize them, use a common Inverter, add few Controlling units in the system and Voila. There you have it, your new Electricity Producing Unit at Home using Solar Panels and Wind Turbines combined.

Simple and Easy isn’t it??….. I guess i made it too simple. Actually it really is that simple.  Here’s another Explanation:

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