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Gurney Seeds. Grow your own food. We are Traverse City" is a site that boosts living sustainability and is located in Traverse City, Michigan.
Visit my other sites: NEC grounding regulations (PDF file) Own a small business? My wife has a book to help small businesses move. I use a program called "Homer" from The National Renewable Energy Laboratory. This program allows you to input all data (and I mean every damn little bit of information including emissions, clouds, everything) about your system to help both design and maintain it. Homer can be downloaded at http://www.nrel.gov/homer
#1 link exchange program on the internet. Have you ever tried to exchange links, swap links or trade links? Was it hard? Use Link Market instead - It is very easy to use, free and very smart. It will save you hours of work. Template by |
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Building your own panelsI've been getting a LOT of emails about this. Feel free to email me about the building of panels. It's not that hard, just time consuming and needs a steady hand to do the soldering and connecting of the cells. Last update: 06/09/2008
Building solar panels isn't as hard as it might seem. If you can connect your battery bank together, you can build your own panels. Panels are made up of individual solar cells that are connected together and then put in a case that you make that protects them from weather and damage. One important aspect of building your panels is that you need to keep in mind the final output that you want. In other words, if you want a 2 amp (42 watt) panel that will charge a 12 volt battery bank, you're going to need a higher voltage output than 12 volts. Most commercial panels will produce about 21 volts (open circuit - nothing connected but the voltage meter; once you connect a load, the voltage will drop). You can build them in a series of sets of cells and then parallel connect them to get the desired output. I know, that sounds daunting but it's really not. Consider: you purchase a solar cell that puts out 2 amps at .5 volts. Okay, you can build a 2 amp panel from that. You'll need 42 cells to get your 21 volts (you want to connect them in series like flashlight batteries; + to -). Now, if you want a 4 amp panel, connect two strings of cells in parallel (+ to +. - to -). The important thing to remember is that it's the same as a battery bank. Parallel connections as power, series connections add voltage.
Connecting the cells takes some patience and learning how to solder the small tabs (they look like little strips of aluminum foil) to the cells, one side of which is positive and the other negative - just like a battery - takes some practice. To make the panels, you can use aluminum for the frame and back, wood, plastic - basically whatever is solid, can be made water proof (not just water resistant) and can last a long time. Solar cells can last 20 years or more. The costs of individual cells vary all the time. I suggest this supplier of solar cells: ● Email Me ● |
