Solar Power Systems - Harnessing Energy From The Sun

Harnessing the sun's energy is currently being supplemented by support from federal governments worldwide. Either through direct government building or providing incentives to encourage businesses and individuals to take greater advantage of solar energy technologies that are available today, governments everywhere are beginning not only to see the advantages of using solar, but seizing it. Click here to read more - home solar panels and DIY Solar Panels

Solar energy in remote locations...space satellites, roadside emergency phones, isolated buildings, solar powered road signs...are all indications that solar energy is quickly moving forward in these arenas.

Solar powered automobiles are rapidly making their way to the forefront of energy-efficient transportation...in a nick of time. As gas and oil prices rise rapidly, having a solar-powered automobile or hybrid makes more sense to more people every day. This, in turn, of course, gives the necessary incentive to automobile makers to produce more electric and hybrid vehicles.

What the world may look like with solar energy is definitely a bright picture. The solar version of driving in the densely populated cities in various locations in the world...New York, Los Angeles, London, Tokyo, Cairo...will be significantly different than it is today.

With new materials in solar roofing, the bright, shiny roof tiles, or sparkles that you see on roofs will be solar energy being spread across the rooftops of the world. The exterior walls of our buildings will be more than just walls...they will be solar collectors as well. Some farmers may elect to produce a new crop...solar cell PV cells, or thermal troughs, and previously empty space in deserts and open prairies will be used to capture and store the sun's energy. Whatever methods work and are used, capturing and putting the sun to work in solar power systems will make this a better place to live.

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Building Your Own DIY Solar Panels

You have a few choices in building solar panels. You can build it yourself or purchase a prefabricated one. Making a DIY solar panel is easier than you would think. Once you have the right materials; solar cells, tabbing wire, and flux pen, you are on your way to building a small scale panel in no time. Most people build their DIY solar panel in less than a day. It also makes for a very fun weekend family project.

Solar panels are made up of numerous silicon solar cells. They generate electricity once photons from sunlight hit the silicon cells bouncing electrons within the cells across the panel. This creates a current which is drawn through copper tabbing wire.

In order to learn how to build a solar panel you will need to take a few initial steps to assess the situation.

1. Purpose - What are you going to use the solar panels for? If you are using the panels to power lighting for a toolshed or RV, you will need less electricity than if you wanted to power your entire household. For this, you will need to determine the wattage for your purposes. You can use a kill-a-watt voltmeter to measure appliances in your house.

2. Grid Tie or Offgrid - If you plan on connecting the panel to your house, you will need to decide whether you need to connect it to your existing electrical grid. You will need an inverter to convert DC current to AC current that is usable within the household. If you decide to go offgrid, you will need a battery to store the electricity. For a single panel, you can survive with a standard 12V battery.

3. Financial considerations - Look into government and state rebates and tax incentives. The first place to look is your local utility's website. Ask people in your neighborhood who have installed solar on their rooftops and ask them what measures they took.

Solar panel installations have gone up about 50% each year since 2004. The technology is solid and the paybacks in cost savings are substantial. Do your part and build your own solar panel for your home today.

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DIY Solar Panels - Build Your Own Solar Panel At Home

In the world today, every individual should do their part to clean up the environment. This starts with implementing energy efficiency measures such as weatherization. If you do your part to cut down on energy usage, we will not have to produce as much energy. It ends with implementing your own renewable energy sources such as solar and wind. DIY solar panels make it incredibly easy to get a system up and running in as little as a single weekend.

There are a few things to keep in mind when learning how to build a solar panel:

1. Do you have the correct materials? Most DIY solar installation kits will contain high quality photovoltaic cells, tabbing wire, and flux pens. You will also need an inverter to tie the electricity back to your grid. If you decide to work off-grid, you need to purchase a battery to store the electricity. It is also advisable to make a box to protect the solar cells from extreme weather. Solar cells are very fragile.

2. What are the zoning laws in your area? Does you local utility allow you to tie the electricity back to your energy grid? There are certain zoning laws in different areas that may prohibit you from connecting your DIY solar panel to the existing electricity grid.

3. What financial incentives are available? The federal government and state are making it a point to move the nation to more renewable electricity. They putting their words into action by making available tax incentives and rebates. If you live in a sunbelt state such as California, there are many rebates available to homeowners that subsidize up to 30% of you initial costs. Group buying efforts are also in place, whereby entire city blocks are grouping to buy solar panels at a discounted bulk price.

Renewable energy such as solar and wind are here to stay. Do your part by educating yourself and those around you to the benefits of renewable energy. It will be an integral part of weaning our nation off of dependence on foreign oil and the resulting national security problem involved with it.

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Installing the Solar Array

Firstly, it is a good idea to clean the glass on the front of the panels first, using a water and dirt repellent glass polish or wax. These glass polishes ensure that rain and dirt do not stick to the glass, thereby reducing the performance of your home solar power systems and are available from any DIY store and many supermarkets and car parts and accessories stores.

Assembly and Connections

Some roof mounted solar mounting kits are designed to be fitted to your roof before fitting the solar panels. Others are designed to have the solar panels mounted to the fixing kits before being mounted to the roof.

With a pole mounted system, you typically erect your pole first and then fit the DIY solar panels once the pole is in position.

A ground based mounting system is the easiest to install as there is no heavy lifting to be done.
As a general rule of thumb, you tend to mount and wire the solar panels at the same time. If you are stepping up the voltage of your system by wiring the panels in series, wire up the required number of panels in series first (i.e. sets of two panels fro 24v, sets of four for 48v).

Once you have wired up a set of panels in series, test them using your multi-meter set to a voltage setting to check that you have the expected voltage (20v plus for 12v system, 40v plus for a 24v system and 80v plus for a 48v system).

Take care when taking these measurements as 40v plus can give a nasty shock in the wrong circumstances.

Once each series is wired up correctly, make up the parallel connections and then test the entire array using your multi-meter, set to voltage setting.

If you have panels of different capacities, treat the different sets of panels as separate arrays. Don’t wire panels of different capacities together, either in series or parallel. Instead, connect the arrays together at the controller.

Once you have completed testing, make the array safe so that no-one can get an electrical shock by accident from the system. To do this, connect the positive and negative cables from the solar array together to short-circuit the array. This will not damage the array and could prevent a nasty shock.

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Safety When Building DIY Solar Panels

There are a few safety notices we ought to go through when building DIY solar panels. Some of these may not be relevant to you, but read through them all first just to make sure.

Remember, you are working with electricity, dangerous chemicals and heavy but fragile objects. It is better to be safe than sorry.

Your First Aid Kit

You will need a good first aid kit on hand, including some items that you won’t normally have to hand. Most specifically, you will need an eye-wash and a wash kit or gel that can be applied to skin in case of contact with battery acid.

Chemical Clean Up kit

You will be working with lead acid batteries which contain chemicals that are hazardous to health. You will require the following:

• A chemical clean up kit suitable for cleaning up batteries fluids (sulphuric acid) in the case of a spill.
• You will also need a supply of strong polythene plastic bags
• A good supply of rags/disposable wipes to mop up any battery spillages.

Chemical clean up kits and chemical first aid kits are available from most battery wholesalers. They only cost a few pounds. You probably wont need them, but if nothing else they buy you peace of mind.

Considering the general public

If you are working in an area where the general public has access, you should use barriers or fencing, and signage to cordon off the area. Clear diversion signage should explain an alternative route.

• In this scenario, I would recommend employing a professional team of builders to carry out the installation work on your behalf. They will already understand the implications of working in a public area and the relevant Health and Safety regulations.

Working at height

You are very likely to be working at height and quite possibly crawling around on slanted rooftops.

Make sure you are using suitable climbing equipment (ladders crawler boards, safety harnesses, scaffolding). You can hire anything that you haven’t got at reasonable prices.

If you have any concerns about working at heights, or it you are working beyond your area of competence at any time, remember there is no shame in hiring a professional. A professional builder can fit a solar array to a roof in 2-3 hours – typically less than half the time it takes an amateur DIY enthusiast.

Handling

Batteries, large inverters and solar arrays can be heavy. Solar panels themselves may not be heavy in their own right, but when several of them are mounted on a frame and then lifted they are heavy, bulky and fragile.

Moving and installing much of this equipment is a two person job as a minimum. More people can be useful when lifting a solar array into position.

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Solar Power System - Positioning Batteries, Controllers and Inverters

You need to identify a suitable location for batteries. This could be a room within a building or a separate building or battery housing.

It is important to try and keep the entire solar power system – solar array, batteries, controllers and inverters – as close together as possible in order to keep the lengths of cable required as short as possible.

You are looking for a location that fits the following criteria:

• Water and weather proof
• Not affected by direct sunlight
• Insulated to protect against extremes temperature
• Facilities to ventilate gases
• Protected from sources of ignition
• Away from children and pets

Lead acid batteries give off very small quantities of explosive gases when charging. You must ensure that wherever your batteries are stored, the area receives adequate external ventilation to ensure these gases cannot build up.

Because of the extremely high potential currents involved with lead acid batteries, the batteries need to be held in a secure area away from children and pets.

Batteries should not be installed directly onto a concrete floor. In extreme cold weather concrete can cause an additional temperature drop inside the batteries, adversely affecting performance.For all of the above reasons, batteries are often mounted on heavy duty racking which is t6hen made secure usi9ng an open-mesh cage.

If you installing your batteries in an area that can get very cold or very hot, you should insulate your batteries. Extreme temperatures does adversely affect the performance of batteries, so if your batteries are likely to be in an area where the temperature drops below 0 deg.c(32 deg.F)or rise above 45 deg c(113 deg.F), you should consider providing insulation.

Polystyrene (Styrofoam) sheets can be used underneath and around the sides of the batteries to keep the batteries insulated. DO NOT INSULATE THE TOP OF THE BATTERIES as this will stop the batteries from venting properly and may cause shorts in the batteries if the insulating material you use is conductive.

Controllers and inverters need to be mounted as close to the batteries as possible. These are often wall mounted, but can also be mounted to racking. They need to be mounted indoors.

Large inverters can be extremely heavy, so if you are planning to wall mount one, make sure that the wall is a load-bearing wall and able to take the weight.

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Working With Lead Acid Batteries

Lead acid batteries are extremely heavy, in some cases weighting as much as an adult. Use proper lifting gear to move them and look after your back.

Heavier batteries quite often have hoops in the top case. To lift a battery, I tend to use a piece of rope threaded through these hoops to create a carrying handle. This means a battery can be carried close to the ground whilst reducing the need for anyone to bend over to pick up the battery.

Lead acid batteries contain sulphuric acid which is extremely corrosive and extremely dangerous to health. Splashes of liquid from the batteries can cause severe chemical burns and must be dealt with immediately.

When working with lead acid batteries, stay safe:

• ALWAYS wear protective clothing – including overalls, eye protection (either protective glasses or a full-face shield) and protective gloves. Steel toe-capped shoes are also advised.
• Keep batteries upright at all times.
• Do not drop a battery. If you do, the likelihood is that the battery has been damaged. In the worst case scenario, the casing could be cracked or broken.
• If you drop a battery, place it immediately in a spill tray (a heavy duty deep greenhouse watering tray can be used if necessary) and check for damage and leaks.
• If you have a damaged battery, both the battery and the spill tray must be double bagged in sealed polythene bags and marked as hazardous waste.
• If you have a spillage from a battery, mop up the spillage immediately using rages or disposable wipes. Place these rages in a polythene plastic bag, seal it and mark it as hazardous waste.
• If any spillage from a battery comes into contact with clothing, remove clothing immediately and dispose it in polythene plastic bags.
• If any spillage from battery comes into contact with eyes, wash repeatedly with eye-wash and seek urgent medical help.
• If any spillage from a battery comes into contact with skin, wash off immediately with water, apply an anti-acid wash, cream or gel to stop burning and then seek urgent medical help.
• If you end up with battery acid in your mouth, wash your mouth out with milk.
• Do not smoke near batteries and ensure that wherever you are storing the batteries is well ventilated.
• Try to prevent arcing or short circuits on battery terminals. Batteries can provide a huge current very quickly – short circuit a battery with a spanner and the spanner is likely to be real hot within a few seconds, and could easily lead to fire or explosion. Remove any rings, bracelets or watches you may be wearing and keep tools a safe distance away from batteries.

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