Posted by admin on 24/10/2009
In all my time spent trawling the internet for information and help when building our solar panels I read stacks of articles and viewed a lot of videos. The quality of both wasn’t always great but even the poor quality ones did occasionally have some value for people wanting solar powered energy. The quality of my own little video on youtube is pretty bad but my kids convinced me to do one to encourage people to visit this website so I‘m denying all responsibility for it!
Anyway this is one video that I did find quite useful earlier on in my search. It’s a google tech talk about solar power and solar panel installation and is made by Meredith McClintock who’s an industry expert. She works for one of the biggest solar power companies in the states and there is a lot of information in the video. However, it is 57 minutes long and can be a bit slow in places so make sure you’ve got a coffee and plenty of time.
The video is at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyiPbiPLmoM
Posted by admin on 22/10/2009
As I mentioned in my previous post I was dumb-struck by the cost of solar panels. After a lot of time spent trawling the internet it seemed a very good way of going a bit “greener” and reducing our carbon footprint but the cost did seem unreasonable. Despite looking for the cheaper solar panels and affordable solar power it seemed that if we went for the usual residential solar panels we were looking at spending a few thousand at least and this was money we just didn’t have.
The benefits of solar powered energy seemed obvious to us:
a) it’s green, it uses nothing but the sun’s light and doesn’t release harmful effects into the atmosphere
b) it’s free, there’s no cost for using the power of the sun and the power can be stored for future use so you can lower or even completely cut out your energy bill. In fact you can even sell your excess back to the electricity companies
c) it’s low maintenance and
d) it can increase the value of your home
Click here to see how to get all these benefit for little outlay
Saving money on our monthly electricity bill was a nice idea but it wasn’t our driving motivation. That was more about reducing the harmful effect we had on the planet for the future benefit of our grandkid(s) and their families, but not being particularly well off, cost was always going to be an issue.
So we decided to “do it ourselves”, well, that would be mainly “do it myself”! Yet more time was spent searching the web, this time trying to learn how to go about creating our own solar panels, preferably without blowing up our house or disconnecting us from the national grid, neither of which my wife would appreciate!
And as it turns out I wasn’t losing my marbles and believing I was capable of making things that would never work. It seems that DIY solar panels are relatively simple to make even for an old duffer like me! And importantly the cost is minor when compared to conventional solar panel installations.
What I needed now was step by step instructions on how to go about building and installing my solar panels. Luckily there were a number of guides on the internet, most of them for a small fee of about £50 so I bought one and off I went… or so I thought!
It turns out that “not all guides to DIY solar panels are equal” and I ended up buying a few before I found one that covered everything I needed to know and was easy to follow at the same time.
But more of that later…