Solar panels: making and building your own solar panel

Building your own solar panel can be a fun project and it is very possible too. There are a number of good sites online detailing exactly how to go about building one, from e-books to other electronic resources. This article is intended to give a good overview of the principles involved when you build solar panels.

How Does Solar Power Panels Work?

To put it in simple terms, a solar panel uses photovoltaic process whereby light cases an electrical charge to flow in a material. If you are going to build homemade solar panels, there are 2 routes by which you are going to achieve a photovoltaic reaction. These are as follows:

First, the half-way house approach.

Here, building a solar panel at home involves purchasing the constituent parts from a suitable supplier. You can buy solar cells or premanufactured solar cells from solar equipment suppliers. Solar cells will convert just the actual sunlight, while the photovoltaic cell will convert light from more sources than the sun. With the components that you get from the supplier, you then assemble the remaining electronic parts required to produce your solar panel of choice. This will enable you to generate your own electricity with the solar power panels.

Second, you make your own solar cells project.

Solar panels: making and building your own solar panelThis is the approach you would want to do if you really want to explore how it all works and be able to say that you built a solar panel to your colleagues and friends. The difference with this method is that rather than buying the premade cells, you make them on your own. This home-grown approach relies on the superconducting/semiconducting photovoltaic properties of cuprous oxide, rather than going for the silicon-based solution. The finished cell will form a red oxidized powder. This oxidization process will also produce a black powder oxide which will be of no use. Copper oxide has a very dense polariton level so it does what it does, produce electricity. Polaritons are the results of photons going together with a conductive material, and the energy from this mixing is what produces the electricity.

So in order to build solar panels, you first need to produce your copper oxide, and this can be done through heating copper. Also, take all relevant safety precautions when doing this and reading up on exactly what you should be doing. The copper is heated for good amount of time so that the unwanted black colored copper will flake out, leaving only red portions of the copper. Then after cooling it, your solar cell will then consist of this oxidized panel in salty water with a fresh, non-oxidized copper panel of the same size. Tiny charges will be produced, but it's electricity and proof that you know how to build solar panels.