PV Gap

Grace Said:

on Extreme Makeover a kid made a solar panel it looked to be made out of coffie cans. how do you make this.?

We Answered:

I didn't see that TV show, but i suspect the kid made some kind of solar heater.

You can go to www.solarcooking.org to learn how to build your own solar oven.

You can also go to Youtube and search "solar water heater" to see demonstrations of how people made various water heaters out of common materials. Maybe Youtube will also have demos of how to make your own windmill. It might work - are you in Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweeping down the plains?

There's no cheap way to make electricity from the sun, at least not yet. Watch out of scams that suggest you can, if you'll only pay them $69 to learn how.

Joann Said:

How to make a solar cell?

We Answered:

When I was a lot younger, maybe even younger than you are now, I was fascinated with the idea of getting "free" power from sunshine. One day I found a book in the library that described how to make a "solar cell" out of ordinary copper sheeting or flashing, which is sometimes used in roofing. Copper sheeting should be readily available at any hardware store or "big box" home center like Lowe's or Home Depot, but the book with instructions is probably long out of print.

Fortunately for you I found a web site, with pictures, that describes exactly how to make a homemade copper "solar cell" pretty much like I remember reading about fifty-something years ago. Find it here:

http://worldwatts.com/homemade_solar_cel…

Now bear in mind this copper-based "solar cell" won't be anything at all like the little silicon solar cells you can buy at Radio Shack or elsewhere. It will not produce very much current nor very much voltage. You won't be able to power much of anything with it. About the best you can hope for is to demonstrate, using a sensitive microammeter, that it does produce electricity when exposed to light.

A silicon solar cell capable of producing useful power from the Sun is a very high tech thing. You probably won't be able to make it at home with stuff you get from a hardware store. At the very least it involves growing, in vacuum or under inert gas, a boule of single-crystal silicon using an induction-heated furnace and slowly pulling the crystal from the melt over a period of several weeks. This is the Czochralski Crystal Growth Process. Then you need to slice wafers from the boule using a diamond slurry carried on a wire saw. Next, polish the surface to a mirror finish. Diffuse "dopant" elements into the surface to create a diode junction. Do this by either using very dangerous metal-organic chemical processes that ignite violently on contact with air or moisture, or do it by implanting "dopant" ions in huge quantities using a particle accelerator. And finally, coat the surface with multi-layer dielectric film coatings to maximize light absorption and minimize light reflection. Then you ultrasonically bond some wires to it and... voila! a homemade solar cell costing only a bit less than a half-million dollars. Or buy one already made at Radio Shack.

Darryl Said:

i need to build a solar pannel from home?

We Answered:

This will show you how to build your own solar panels:

http://mycomparisons.com/1.php?id=energy

Salvador Said:

What web site Ican get solar in cheep price?or windmeal technology?

We Answered:

www.care2.com has all sorts of eco friendly type information and links.

You might also try older isssues of Mother Earth News.

In terms of solar, if you do the panel and battery thing as an electricty replacement, there is a bit of expense. There are a number of different solar mechanisms that you can use to supplement building and water heating systems for very little money and/or out of salvaged materials.

You might find some home-made windmill systems and plans out there. However, many communities have more regulations on the books about windmills; theyv'e been around a few more hundred years than solar panels.

In your search engine, you might use the words "off the grid" for a number of commercial and non-commercial energy generation information sites. There is a guy out there somewhere in the middle of the country who is off the grid with quite a bit of information for free; he also sells his consultation services.