If you are looking for a fun and useful project to work on, you will love making your own solar panel. Not only is it a project that anyone with basic skills can do, but its a great way to get the kids out into the shop and learn an alternative to video games. Once the project is complete youll have a way to provide power for emergencies or to use electrical devices in remote areas of your farm or outbuildings. Just one solar panel can provide enough power to keep some lighting working in an outage, charge a cell phone, run a laptop or other necessities in an emergency, and a complete small system only needs the addition of a battery, like a deep cycle marine battery, and an inverter which you can get right downtown.

You might think of looking on the Internet for solar panel kits, but youll soon find that they are really expensive and shipping isnt cheap, either. A little time spent in research will show that basic solar panels like the one discussed here are pretty simple, just a group of solar cells wired together and enclosed in a weather tight enclosure. Granted, there are some minor circuitry considerations to improve functionality and safety, but the fact is anyone that likes to use basic tools can build their own solar panel, and it doesnt have to be an expensive project.

Solar cells that actually produce the electrical power from sun power can be ordered online pretty cheap, and you might even get free shipping. Once you get that far, everything else you need is right down town; all you will want after that is a good set of instructions to help get it right the first time and avoid making expensive mistakes. You will save so much by learning to build your own panels from local materials that a small amount spent on good quality video and written instruction will pay big dividends in safety and scrap materials, not to mention avoiding the mental anguish of learning the hard way.

A solar panel system that will provide some usable power will include the solar panel, which you can build yourself for a fraction of the cost of ordering a pre-made kit, a deep cycle battery, an inverter to produce AC power that will run tools or appliances, and some mounting and wiring hardware. Depending on the size of the load and how often electricity will be required, a decision will have to be made whether to rely on one solar panel or to build more, thus providing more wattage.

A DIY solar panel project can be a fun way to build a useful and lasting device that will please you for years to come, and your friends will think youre a genius!