When You Build A Solar Panel - What Are The Risks To Watch Out For?
† Tuesday, July 20th, 2010Don’t be too quick to start to build a solar panel, because before you start; there are a few pitfalls that you need to be aware of. Building a solar panel is a relatively easy process if you have good instructions to follow, know where to get the individual products from and have the right equipment.
That is not the first step though. The first step is to decide how many solar panels you are going to build and what you are going to do with the electricity they generate. Decide how big your dream is. Do want to start a solar farm, building 2000 watt panels and feed electricity back to the national grid or do you want to build 500 watt panels for running specific appliances in your home or do just want a small one; to build a solar panel for re-charging your digital camera batteries?
Obviously, the main difference between building a 100 watt panel and a 1000 watt panel is the number of solar cells you need and the time to build it. Most of us, who build our own solar panels to generate electricity for our homes, do it so that we can drastically reduce the expense of actually fitting solar panels as they can be prohibitively expensive.
Now you know how large you solar panel is going to be, we now have to find a ready source of solar cells. Now you don’t want to pay a lot of money for them. The first port of call for me is eBay, sometimes you can get lucky and find someone who is selling a pile of solar cells at a very good price. So what if you can’t find what you need on ebay and other auction sites, what do you do next?
The best option is to contact companies in your local area who use solar panels to power remote pieces of electrical equipment. Contact these companies and make yourself known to them, tell them what you want to do so at a later date should they have any broken cells they want to dispose of, they will contact you. One of the major users of solar cells are the road and traffic signs, often you see them on the side of the road, and often they will have the company’s contact details on them. Traffic signs often get broken by manhandling or cars driving into them.
They don’t fix the solar panel if it is broken or chipped, they will fit a new one and chuck the old one in the skip. These damaged panels will still work fine, and if you know how to build a solar panel, it doesn’t take much to repair them in most cases.
This is the biggest pitfall you have to overcome, so go and find some local companies who are throwing away their solar cells and recycling them.
A final word, if there is one thing I want to drive home to you, is the fact you need to have a very good picture in your mind’s eye of what it is you want to achieve. Having worked on many projects, you can learn from my experience, if you don’t do it you will have a panel fit for nothing. It will be chaos and you will have a disorganized mess. Stick a picture on the wall and go and build it.
Different Types of Solar Panels
- Polycrystalline Solar Panels - Cast Polysilicon
- Thin Film Solar Panels - copper indium diselenide
- Satellite Grade Solar Cells