With the economy as bad as it is these days, everyone could use tips on how to save money. One way to save money is to reduce the electricity bill, one of the main expenses for a household. Although there are simple ways to conserve electricity, these have relatively small effects on the bill. Building your own solar panel to help power your house, however, can make a huge dent in your electricity costs.
This article shows how to make a small solar panel. Although it is possible to make your own solar cells, this article assumes the cells either have already been made or have been purchased and ready to go.
Iron Solder
Prepping the cells:
Often when you buy photoelectric (solar) cells, they come with two strips of metal on each side. If these have a white coating on them, you want to scrap it off using a screwdriver or something similar. Once you have done that, you want to take a strip of tab wire that is twice the length of the solar cell, and solder it to each metal strip on the front side of each cell. To make a decent sized panel you will need about 36 cells. Also, the soldering iron should be rated between 40 - 60 watts.
Next you want to take four of the cells and remove any coating on the metal from the back of the cell. Two of the cells will be placed at the top of the panel (on columns 1 and 3), two will be placed on the bottom (on columns 2 and 4). Again solder a piece of tab wire twice the length of the cell to each metal strip, but going in the opposite direction of the tab wire on the front of the cell.
Combining the cells:
Place one of the four cells mentioned above on a piece of cardboard or large board so you can lay down and align the cells. Place the cells down one after the other so that the hanging wires of each cell will overlap with the following cell. When you reach the bottom (nine cells down), place another one of the four special cells down and continue the process.
Once you have all the cells down, solder them down against each other. This may take a while, but just be patient! Next take a piece of bus wire and solder the wires from the bottom cells of columns 1 and 2 to the wire. On a separate piece of bus wire, solder the bottom cells of columns 3 and 4 together. Next, solder the top cells of columns 2 and 3 to another piece of bus wire. The purpose of this is to create a running circuit.
Finally, take wires hanging off of the top cell of column 1 and solder both wires to a piece of bus wires. Do the same on a separate piece of wire to the wires hanging off the top cell of column 4. The wire off column 1 will be the positive, and the one off column 4 will be the negative. Cover each side with a piece of glass by gluing one piece to the back with silicon glue (a blob on the center of each cell should do it), then gluing that piece of glass to another on the other side. Put a bit of framing on it, and you're done!
Hopefully, using the instructions on this article you were able to create a solar panel and can now save money on your next electricity bill!