Everyone has their own reasons for wanting to build a solar panel. It doesn’t matter if you just want to get your feet wet with solar power before purchasing a full blown residential solar panel system or maybe you’ve decided this would make a great way to reduce your power bill.  It doesn’t matter the reason, the important thing is your ready to do something about it.

By the end of this section you should understand the basics of what it takes to make a solar panel system, and how the pieces all come together.

What it takes to build a Solar Panel, then learn what additional parts you’ll need to go from homemade solar panel to a full blown Solar Power System – Everything from the panels to the inverter. Read More→

Yes, you will need a charge controller for your solar power system.

Pretty much, from this point on 90% of the so called homemade solar panel plans end. After you’ve finished reading more about charge controllers, blocking diodes, inverters, and battery banks, you’ll understand why we recommend the Earth4Energy Plans highly.

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Change the dc power created by your solar power system to a friendly ac power.

Since, we assume you’ve been reading along with these little guide we wrote, then you already understand that houses use ac power, but solar panels make dc power.

So, you’re probably wondering how do I use the power if I need ac but I only have dc. Good question and very easy to answer and implement. You just need an inverter.

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Really quick run-down, this will hopefully show you its not that difficult to make a solar panel.

Note: all dimensions and proper wire gauges can be found in a good set of plans.

Ok, lets start out by taking a closer look at the parts needed to build a solar panel.

Part 1. A frame: all the frame will do is hold all the interconnected solar cells in place and keep them out of the elements.

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It may seem obvious, but in order to store the energy produced by your solar panels, you will need batteries.

Just like most people, we don’t mind spending the time building something, as long as we are able to use it and save some money at the same time. We found that a little time spent reconditioning free batteries saved us a bundle on this project and allowed us to have a much larger battery bank than we had first thought we’d end up with.

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