When You Build A Solar Panel – What Are The Risks To Watch Out For?

Before you actually begin to build a solar panel, bear in mind that there are a few potential problems to keep an eye on. 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. 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?

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. The main reason for many people wanting to make their own solar electricity is that they can save on the cost of having to actually by them because they are very 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. The only problem with this is that if you can’t find the specific size and quantity of solar cells, what do you do then?

A cheap or even a free source of solar cells is from local businesses who either manufacture products or utilize solar cells on a day to day basis. 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. 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.

The biggest challenge for most “solar panel builders” is finding a reliable, low cost source of solar cells so pick your telephone directory and start looking for those companies now.

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. It will be chaos and you will have a disorganized mess. Know what you want and go and build it.

Different Types of Solar Panels