Solar DIY - Looking at the Simplicity of a Solar DIY Project

Monthly bills are piling up, gas prices are at all time highs and we are all looking at ways we can save ourselves some money. We should start by looking at ways we can make our homes more energy efficient and maybe a starter solar DIY project. Harbor Freight and Northern Tool and Equipment both have solar DIY kits starting at around $200 going up into the thousands. For those who want to find the real savings, building your solar system yourself is the way to go. Spend $20 to $40 and get a high rated solar DIY guide. Let's start saving money.

The first step is to decide where we are going to put our solar panels. A open piece of land next to the house our a good spot on the roof. You will want to make sure that your panels can use as much of the suns daylight as possible. The more sun light we can utilize the more power our panels will put out for the day. With our building area picked out we can now get started on our solar DIY project.

Now lets concentrate on building our first panel. Then we can increase the size of our system one solar panel at a time. The nice thing about a solar DIY project the more knowledge we get the faster the last part of the project becomes. Building the first one always takes the longest.

The next part I think is most important. That is having a good charge controller for our solar power system. This controls the amount of electricity that is flowing in and out of our storage unit. The charge controller will help us get the most out of our batteries. The reason I feel this is the most important part is the batteries are the most expensive part of our system. We need to buy ourselves a deep cycle battery for our storage unit. I like to make my storage unit a little large than I will need at the moment. So lets buy two batteries to start out. That way when my solar DIY project progresses I will not have to work on the storage unit again. I can concentrate on my solar panels.

Finally we have DC power coming out of our solar panel and going into our batteries. The DC power has to get converted to AC power to use in our home. So we will have to install a power inverter. So lets install one large enough to handle our finished solar DIY project.

After the entire system is built I like to go back over the whole thing. If your not sure about something refer back to your guide. I am pretty good at following directions but better safe then sorry when working with electricity.

There is very little maintenance for your solar system. Natural weather conditions tend to keep them clean enough without losing much in efficiency. I just like to look over my system every couple of weeks and check the batteries and see if there is any sign of corrosion. Check the wires for any discoloration. Discoloration can be a sign your wires are getting to hot and might have to go to a larger gauge wire. All in all there is not a whole lot to keep up on.

Going the solar DIY route, our system will cost us up front but the future savings will be huge. Our system will last us long after it has paid for itself several times over. You will have the comfort of knowing you will be able to fix any problem that can go wrong. Just from the knowledge you obtained by putting the system together.

I'm Jon Johannes. I've work on several types of alternative energy projects. Wind turbines to solar for home and agricultural use. Solar energy homes just happens to be one of my passions. I strongly believe that knowledge is the key to any project. The more we utilize natural resources, the more we give back to our planet.

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