Building your own solar panel is becoming more financially viable these days with skyrocketing electricity and heating costs, combined with the rapidly declining cost of solar panels. Constructing a solar panel is cheap (you can do it for less than $200) is easy with the simple steps you are going to learn today, and can easily be done in a few hours.
Calculating Electrical Needs - Solar panels can only provide power during daylight, and only reach their stated peak power output with an average of six hours of full sunlight. Therefore, a solar panel or a collection of them must meet the entire electrical demand of the system during those six hours. If the total demand of the system is 3000 watts, the panels built must produce at least an estimated 500 watts per hour to meet that demand.
Putting the Cells In - Use a marker to draw lines that will be used as a cell-placement guide. Most solar cells are made with tabs,so they can be soldered together. For ease of assembly and installation, several of these should be soldered into units of strings or blocks. They also can be done as rows, columns or squares. The cell rows can then be fastened into place on the substrate using non-conductive silicon caulking as a glue. Put a dab of caulk on the back of each cell and press each grouping onto the substrate.