When You Build A Solar Panel – What Are The Potential Problems To Look Out For?

When you build a solar panel, there are a number of things that need to be taken into consideration before you actually start. 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.

However, before all that it is important to understand what it is you want to end up with. There are many things you can do when you build a solar panel, you can build a small one for charging up re-chargeable batteries, or you can build larger 200, 300 or 400 watt panels to run home appliances and store excess electricity in a battery bank, or you can build 1000 watt panels and start a little business feeding electricity back to the grid.

The only difference between making 500 watt solar panel and 100W solar panel is the quantity of solar cells you require and the time you have available to spend on the project. 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.

Having decided the size of panel or panels you are going to produce, the next part of the process and the critical part is to establish where you can acquire low cost if not free solar cells. 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. However, this process is a bit hit and miss and only about 50% of the time can you find something that you are looking for.

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. The best source of these solar cells are the businesses who put out traffic signs, for example, when repairs are being carried out to roads. The Companies name and telephone number can often be found attached to it somewhere. Traffic signs often get broken by manhandling or cars driving into them.

Should the solar cell part of the sign get damaged, they won’t repair it, they will just replace the whole thing. If you have a good training manual which shows you how to build a solar panel, it won’t take much for you to repair a damaged one.

Finding a cheap supply of solar cells is the only major problem you need to solve if you are looking to build a solar panel on a shoestring, so start searching for those local businesses today.

Remeber what I said earlier, know what outcome you want to end up with, have a clear picture even sketch it out on a piece of paper. From my experience, if you don’t have this, you build an odd panel for this and an odd panel for that. You will make life very hard for yourself and will probably be disappointed. Stick a picture on the wall and go and build it.

Different Types of Solar Panels