Low Cost Solar Panels
By Andrew Oke
When we first started our search for low cost solar panels we were solely disappointed. It seemed that everywhere we looked the price was far out of our reach. I was really a small mad because we now realize that we are ruining our planet, but the prices to help save it are out of the average persons reach. There had to be a better way to do this.
That’s when I found out that you can buy solar cells and build your own solar panels. I went searching around looking at the costs of solar cells and nearly had a stroke. It cost more to buy the solar cells than it did to buy the panel! Than I learned another small tidbit of information. I had been looking at the highest quality solar cells. The manufacturers make different grades of cells because they can’t make them perfect all the time. The highest quality ones are the ones that are used in solar panels, but there are also what’s called “B” grade solar cells. These are cells with tiny imperfections… a small chip here or some of the lines aren’t perfect, but they still produce fantastic power and from 10 feet away you can’t tell that they’re not perfect.
These cells make fantastic low cost solar panels because there is a huge surplus for them. I like ebay even more now because there are a couple guys on there that buy huge shipments of these cells and sell them very cheaply on eBay.
I generally buy packs of at least 36 because that’s the minimum number of cells that you’ll need to build your solar panel. I will try and find cells that are 4×4 or 3×6 as they produce roughly two watts each and the finished panel will produce roughly 72 watts. Be careful when buying the cells though. You want cells whose output power is rated in amps. Any cells that have a milliamp output are not excellent for solar panels. Each cell outputs 0.55 volts so the more amps it produces the more watts you’ll get as volts and amps are multiplied together to get watts.
Always remember that there are solutions out there to any problems you may have and simply by doing a small searching and scrounging you can find them.
Andrew Oke is very interested in renewable energy. He has 16 years experience living off the grid, and has completely built his own renewable energy system. You can learn more about [http://www.living-off-grid.com/solar/low-cost-solar-panels]low cost solar panels at the previous link. There is also another fantastic article over at [http://www.squidoo.com/low-cost-solar-panels]low cost solar panels
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