What makes up a homebuilt solar powered system and its individual parts – From the panels to the inverter.
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.
Part 1. The Solar Panel: This is pretty straight-forward, we’ve all seen a solar panel before. With a good set of plans you’ll be able to make a solar panel that looks like it was bought from a store, not built at home.
Before you read any further, if you plan on building your own solar power, you will need a set of plans. Take our word for it the Earth4energy plans are the best your going to find. You can order them by following this link to Earthenergy.
All the solar panel does is collect the rays from the sun and convert it into electricity.
Part 2. The Charge Controller: From the solar panel the electricity travels down the wire to the charge controller that will feed the power into the batteries.
A charge controller will also make sure that you don’t overcharge your batteries, and help you monitor the amount of power stored in the batteries.
Part 3. The Batteries: Power is simply stored in the batteries for later use. You can also run D/C appliances directly from your batteries.
Do not even think about using old car batteries, as these were not meant to be recharged on a regular basis, go with lead-acid batteries that are deep cycle.
Part 4. The Inverter: Now that we have all that power stored in our batteries we need to take the D/C power and convert it into A/C power that can be used to power virtually anything in your household.
All the inverter does is convert from D/C to A/C, allowing you to plug in and use the power your solar panels generate.
If you would like to learn more about the individual parts mentioned above just follow the links to the right.
There is a difference between solar plans
Just a little heads up for people looking to buy a set of plans to help them build their solar panels.
We have only found 1 set of plans that honestly take you from part 1 to part 4, and those are the ones offered at Earth4Energy.
All the other plans will teach you how to make a solar panel, but that’s really about it, they briefly tell you the other 3 parts, but don’t actually show you how to set it up.
So, if you want the complete solar power system plans, then do yourself a favor and get the correct plans from the beginning. You can order the complete plans by following this link.