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Building Your Own Solar Panel In the Garage
jeroen8 writes "A Dutch guy was able to build his own solar panel in his garage using materials that were a third as expensive as the mass produced solar panels currently available on the European market. He bought his solar cells on eBay and used them to create his own panel. His output price is only 1.20 Euro per Watt Peak (Wp). This makes you wonder if we are paying too much for mass-produced solar panels, which should, in theory, be a lot less expensive than something you create in your garage."
If they aren't brand new the reason why it's cheaper is because someone else has paid for much of it.
Only cheaper if your time is worth nothing. Still, very cool. But not particularly novel or groundbreaking.
I don't think it's that uncommon for used goods to cost less than new goods.
Wow you mean to tell me if I buy factory defect products that carry no warranty on ebay I can save money!? I never knew! It seems as if the Dutch have found the secret to inexpensive solar power: Factories should ONLY produce bent and dent cells!
I would've built it outside, but to each his own.
The main costs in solar array manufacturing are manpower, raw structural materials, and the solar cells. Remember that the prices for single solar cells are fairly constant, given that they're mass produced already. Same for the structural materials. That leaves (Cells + Materials) on the hobbyist's side and (Cells + Materials + Labour) on the mass production side. It's not surprising that a hobbyist can construct a panel for a competitive price if he doesn't count his time as a cost.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
If you've read the article, you know the quality here is poor and there's been no accounting for his labor.
Note as well that First Solar (FSLR) is the first manufacturer to break the $1/W barrier, as announced just a couple weeks ago.
Corporate Greed
Delta-Mike November Bravo Tango
The cells were used (not new). And he didn't have to pay labor costs for constructing and installing. The headline should read "Man buys used solar cells and installs them himself saving labor costs. Why can't other businesses not pay people and then sell the solar cells cheaper?!"
Yeah, it's easy to build things cheap when you get the components cheap.
that I found this article to be quite *enlightening* I need to go to bed.
The author bought damaged solar cells from eBay, selected the good ones, then soldered those together. Then he jury-rigged his own waterproof casing and electrical connections. Used goods are cheaper but that does not mean new ones are over-priced.
Let us know how long his cells last outside before insinuating all the solar cell producers in the world are selling overpriced gear.
A NYC lawyer blogs. http://www.chuangblog.com/
...but you've only paid for the parts, not the labor or the engineering or the rent etc.
The point that the packaging of solar panels is expensive is not lost on me. There's a local firm (Tucson) making thin-film cells which ought to be packaged as plastic-laminated roof shingles to keep the final cost down.
But I admire his fortitude in building a panel. I have a stack of cells in my workshop that I don't see how I'll ever turn into a panel, since it requires lots of glass and care and sticky tape.
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
Wow, that's a pretty cheap garage.
So if a production one costs 10 dollars, 3 time 10 is $30,
Then, because its less, we have to subtract his costs of $30 from the production cost of $10, it costs him minus 20 dollars to build each one?
You mean it was 1/3 the cost of a production unit.
There is no such thing as "3 times less" of anything.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Panels today have a usable lifespan of over 25 years.
They have the proper connectors, and the appropriate gauge wire. They can handle 50mph hailstones and 90mph wind, and they're all UL listed. They're warranteed, usually for 20+ years. Some are hybrid (sandwiching amorphous Si and crystalline Si), which gather more light and produces more power per sq foot, something that can't currently be made in the garage.
Purchased panels also cost about 3x the price of doing it yourself (maybe $4-6 /watt). However, I would strongly bet that the overall cost of ownership will be higher for DIY folks, who can't compete with the quality of fully-assembled panels. They will have to make their own mountable panels, and doing that right will not be cheap. They will have to be able to handle high winds and weather, too. And the UL listing will also mean that you can be grid-tied, since the utility companies won't allow you to connect non-UL-listed generating stations to the grid.
Some cool things you can do with DIY panels is get exactly the shape you want. You can also add more bypass diodes to handle partial shading better. One of the biggest issues with PV panels is the significant drop in output with only minor amounts of shade.... A single leaf stuck over part of a cell can reduce the panel's output by 25%. But if you DIY, you can put many more bypass diodes into it, causing a much smaller fraction lost. You can even mount it on some sort of heat sink or antifreeze-filled copper plating to get better performance (PV cells work better when cool.)
It's a cool project. But if you're trying to save money over the long term, DIY is probably not the way to go.
three times less expensive - is that the same as a third of the cost?
I'm not being a grammar nazi, just doesn't make sense (its morning here after a late night, so maybe the synapses haven't whatevered).
I am fairly (95%) certain that these Cells have been stolen, probably by a person working at a solar cell manufacturing plant.
Getting an 'uncounted' batch of 'mixed quality' just screams 'stolen'.. and then the price itself is also cheaper then the raw manufacturing
But they are 'new', extracting Cells from used panels is not cost effective as commercial panels are laminated and string soldered which is very hard to take apart without breaking most of the cells.
Also, when you buy good quality Solar Panels you usually get around 25 years of warranty and the knowledge that they have been throughly safety tested (and designed) so that they won't burn down your house when one cell short circuits or your getting a bit more sun then imagined. I would think that's worth something by itself.
The headline led me to believe that he was manufacturing photovoltaic cells in his garage, which would have been interesting. I read TFA and come to find out that what he's done is something any 6th-grade kid could do as a science fair project. Not impressed.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
This guy now has got a big opportunity. To start his own line of not expensive solar panels. I would buy one straight away.
for most people, im not sure that is the tricky bit, nor sticking it between some glass. I, and id suggest a fair few other people would stumble at figureing out how to connect this pannel to the grid in my home to make use of the electricity it generates. Would anyone be able to shed any light on this end of things?
The panel in the article produced 17 Watts, for a panel size of about 1m x 0.5m (approximated from photo with mobile phone in it). A quick google reveals a 43W polycrystalline panel of similar size for about 300 euros (about 7euros/watt peak)
A picture is worth exactly 1024 words.
"This makes you wonder if we are NOT paying too much for mass-produced solar panels"... I'm sorry that is really bugging the shit out of me since jeroen8 doesn't know basic grammar. I think he was attempting to go for the common phrase "are we not ___" but instead ended up asking the question in negative. So now your question is backward, meaning a reply of Yes actually means No: "Yes, we are NOT paying too much" instead of "we are paying too much". And btw darkmeridian, there is no such word as 'jury'-rigged
The story is about the Europe where governments subsidise the solar panel use by giving enormous tax cuts to the buyers of solar panels and even going as far as providing 0-interest credits.
This insane amount of state intervention spawns corruption in the production and supply of the solar panels, which explains such high prices.
The photovoltaic industry is massively controlled. The patents prevent manufacturing monosilicon ingot using solar thermal process, keeping the cost high.
Then there is the inverter cost which are 10 x the cost of manufacturing the inverters.
Then there is the acreditation that does not mean the panels do actualy perform, only that they performed at the time of accreditation
Home made cells are cheaper, Shuco germany makes panels of laminated plastic, how chepa can you get?
Normal glass does not transmit light as efficiently.
A lot of care is taken to prevent moisture to creep into the cells to make them last the 30 years they are supposed to. The silicon paste technique the guy uses is quite sufficient.
Shell just ditched their alternative energy plans. They own a couple of essential photovoltaic patents, so lets hope the don't block the industry.
Anyway, you should be more interested in solar thermal energy, cheaper, easier and more efficient!
Climatebabes rule! www.climatebabes.com
Here's mine without any attention paid to weatherproofing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYIQQgXWmu0
And I just delivered two to high school in Africa for their science class last week.
Video on the way.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
"is three times less expensive than mass produced solar panels"... Hmmm. If it was "one time less expensive", it'd be free, so if it was *THREE* times less expensive, does that mean he got paid twice the normal cost? I think that probably means to read "one third the cost". Why can't Johnny do math?
The summary is bad.
1. He bought damaged solar cells from a one-time vendor. There isn't a supply of them for anyone to make. They might have been stolen, they might have been a shipping write-off, whatever. They aren't new solar cells.
2. He scrounged materials, like glass, for free. Manufacturers can't do that. Most people don't have that opportunity.
3. He used wire that he "happened to have" (quoting the article). He bought it at some point, or found it. Again, not something you or I could normally do.
And so forth. Comparing the cost of doing something this way to buying a new cell is invalid and misleading. The summary is bad. And the Slashdot editors are responsible for validating and endorsing the summary, suggesting that they were asleep at the wheel.
Sheesh, can't we get some decent editing here? Has the entire field of news reporting gone to the dogs?
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Why is it "they might have been stolen" which cannot be argued against (they might have been) is used in a context that means "they HAVE been stolen" which can be argued against?
If you mean "might" then use it as you mean "might". If you want to use it as "it is stolen" then SAY "it is stolen".
I am appalled at the comments! /.-ers used to be DIY-ers not lemmings. What happened?
This is cool not from the "he's able to compete with a commercial product" standpoint, but because he had the interest, took the time (and money) to tinker and figure it out, and actually built something that works. Would a commercial product be better? Maybe. Probably. Who cares? The fact is that he is having fun doing something rather than moaning about how solar power is not yet available. He is a doer not a complainer. Making a positive contribution rather than complaining.
Sheesh /.-ers. "Nothing to see here. Move along!" Go back to being mass-market fed couch potatoes fattened up for commercial gain.
Bah! And get off my lawn!
anon
What one is better, these solar cells or the heat-pipes and parabolic mirrors?
I notice in the two pictures of completed panels that there is significant reflection coming off the front-side glass. That sucks, because any light being reflected off the glass is light that can't be converted to solar power. Although it may not seem like a lot - glass being mostly transparent and all - it can cut down on your overall efficiency by a few percentage points. Commercially available solar panels (for residential and industrial use, anyway) use tempered glass with an anti-reflective coating, which is a lot more expensive than your ordinary plate glass from the hardware store.
The price quoted is for how much power the panel could produce under ideal circumstances. It is not all that useful a figure. If you don't maintain your panels or if they don't live up to the full life span you have no hope of recouping your investment. The current *actual* nuclear generation price is around 5 cents/kWh. Last I checked solar was somewhere around 16-20 times this.
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=solar%20panel%20fire
SIG: HUP
Power density costs money, but is it necessary? Maybe his panels do get only 25% the watts per square meter as an expensive panel. But they get something like 3x the watts per dollar. To get the same wattage, you do need 4x the area with his cheap panels. But since solar power in the Netherlands is about 100W:m^2 average across the year, a 1KW home gets in 10m^2 sunlight its consumption (before cell inefficiency, and using inefficient storage/retrieval HW). If he's actually getting 62W:m^2, he needs 16.2m^2. If that gets averaged by day/night, and is close to the average daylight (he posted 2 days before the equinox), and accounts for weather, then maybe he needs 200m^2 (that's 5% averaged annual efficiency). That's only 14x14m, about the size of a home that consumes 1KW.
When roof space costs more than these cheap cells save, they're worth the higher cost. Or if the generated power can be sold back to the grid, then the higher density can be worth the higher cost (especially over time). But sometimes, cheap low density can be worth it. Which is why dye sensitized and other cheap, (relatively) inefficient generating materials are interesting. If they can generate power long enough to pay for themselves (including their lifecycle energy cost), they can make "hay" while the Sun shines, even as we make more dense cells become cheaper.
--
make install -not war
Kind of like freeware... (Rubbing sticks together to make a flame.)
TSIA
So he really didn't build anything, he assembled something. Come back when he actually builds the cells too.THAT would be news worthy.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
This project has been done before but this one is a good read for those that have the skills, time & patience.
http://www.instructables.com/id/Build_a_60_Watt_Solar_Panel/
It can be much cheaper to build this panel yourself over buying one from a regular solar panel manufacturer as you will not be paying them for the labor or markup on materials. This noted, it will also take quite a bit of your time to put one together. But the flip side is that you can then brag about this accomplishment and the relative free energy you will then have.
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
Tune in to the webcast of NASA TV-- They're deploying their new solar panels now!
Jesse James, as you've never seen him before! Can he reduce quartz, purify silicon, eliminate Global Warming, and Save the Planet!?
Be Sure to watch UNREASONABLE GARAGE.
If "we all" took your advice and "waited until computers get better" before the joe masses guy bought one, we'd be stuck now back in 486 or earlier days still.
There has to be mass quantities demand for products for the R and D guys to keep going and to develop both the prototypes *and* -and this is important- the manufacturing technology to be able to bring "quantities of scale" into the scene so we have further price drops and quality increases. My PV panels are now 10 years old and still work fine, and I am happy/glad/proud to have been part of the alternate energy solution back then by sticking my wallet where my mouth was and getting some. I'll do it again when it is time to replace those. Same as I have a stack of old computers in my shed that are about useless today, but by me buying them I helped encourage and fund further computer development. Now my personal cash involved in both computers and solar PV is small, but taken as my part of the aggregate consumer demand-it added up to we have some decent advances, and I knew full well back then that the stuff would be getting better, but I chose not to wait for the "other guy".
There's a saying we had back in the 60s that just fits so well in any number of scenarios, "you are part of the problem, or part of the solution". I think de-centralized power that joe sixpack can actually own and pay off, and get away from the energy price fixing cartels that only rent you the infrastructure forever with no way to ever pay them off, is just so spiffy an idea economically and politically and socially (no wars over access to sunshine for instance, as opposed to oil and uranium and associated tech) that I am willing to jump in and be part of the solution and not wait, even though I know it will be "better" later on.
Hmm, just dawned on me one of the ways how I afforded it too (I don't make that much at all), just by rerarranging what parts of my disposable income I had. My venture into solar PV just about exactly coincides in time with my ceasing supporting the **AA media goons by stopping buying their full bloat price marked up "entertainment" copies. You could take that idea and run with it and maybe afford at least some of your power needs -say-give up the satellite or cable Tv bill, make do with free OTA digital signals for the TV and your entertainment, and stick that 50 to 100 bucks a month toward paying off at least a modest 1 kw solar rig, something like that. And if you do the install yourself it saves a lot (except for final circuit box install, that needs a licensed electrician, pay one hour labor, whatever, for that). Replace a circuit or two in your house. There's no need to go whole house or nothing with solar PV, just pick the one or two circuits you REALLY don't want to lose in a power failure, the circuit that drives your furnace blower for example, or your freezer and fridge, or if you go battery bank, the home office so it is a big UPS system, etc, your choice and along those lines.
A garage in Calif* costs $2 million. That would make a garage solar panel a bit more expensive than buying a solar panel from China.
"so that they won't burn down your house when one cell short circuits "
Short circuit cells produce no power. They are not like a battery, so short circuiting one, or many, cells of a solar panel does nothing but reduce/eliminate the power produced.
Sorry, no fire.
Yup. I've been off the grid since 1979 or so. All this talk about it has to get better to work...bah. In fact, when I've dabbled in buying new tech (amorphous, thin film) it's been a waste of money totally. I use multi-crystalline panels from Solarex, which has been owned by a variety of energy firms (mostly oil). They have even honored a 25 yr warranty at 20 yrs due to a known bad batch that took awhile to fail.
As an engineer I've looked into this in some detail, which is part of why I started in solar in the first place. Let me tell you, it's not the tech in the cells, it's the panels that hold them. The ones I own (several different models all have these features) have tempered glass that stands *everything* as mentioned above. Mine have taken hail and a couple of hurricanes -- even when the mounts didn't fare as well.
The cells are put on a pretty sophisticated plastic back that has about the same thermal expansion coefficient as the cells. The inter cell connections are ductile and flexible after thousands of cycles.
I have one heck of a machine shop and my garage isn't to be believed. I could no more duplicate this kind of quality and attention to detail than I could just make the 2010 Camaro I ordered (and yes I can build IC engines and frames from scratch).
Now, go to the hardware store and price a window the same size and quality (you won't find that last, but you get the idea). Unless you've been remodeling lately, you are in for a quite a shock.
The commercial panels are great -- this is posted from power they collected today, and I can't tell the ones in my array that are 15-20 years older than the others except by the serial number.
I have made my own arrays at times, for little remote kinds of things -- data collection from my back 40 acres for example. Sooner or later, something like water or an insect wrecks them, or some sort of de-lamination due to thermal cycles. The commercial ones are a better deal.
Just get on with building a system -- these things are more than ready for prime time. My machine shop doesn't mind solar power a bit.