Home Solar System

A solar system for your home is made up of 4 parts:

1. A container to hold the cells facing the sun
2. An array of solar cells that absorbs the sun’s rays and changes it into electricity
3. A battery to store the electricity that is generated
4. A converter to convert the electricity into a form that is used by your home appliances

Let’s go through each one.

The first thing to do is construct a container for the solar cells.  This container is basically a plywood shallow box like how most solar panels look like.  Make sure the sides of your box are not too high so that they do not shade the sun’s rays from the solar cells when the sun shines at an angle.  You also need a thin, flat base for the solar cells to be glued to.  You can use another piece of plywood or glass, as long as it is a non-conductor.  Paint all sides of the box and base with weather-proof paint.

Now you need is a set of solar cells.  New commercially made solar cells are expensive but you can buy some quite cheaply from eBay and places like that.  Those that you can find on eBay are most likely blemished ones that cannot be sold for commercial prices.  There are different types of solar cells like amorphous ones and crystalline ones.  My advice is to buy some mono-crystalline solar cells (those were the type that I bought and they work fine).  Crystalline cells are known to be the most energy efficient.  Solar cells are like batteries, having a certain voltage and ampere capacity.  Do not choose those with too low a voltage capacity otherwise you would need a lot of cells to power your appliances.  A 0.55V 3.98Amp solar cell (or thereabouts) should be just right.  The number you need should be at least 36.

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Your set of solar cells needs to be wired together in series.  When you buy the solar cells, they come with tabbing wire.  A tab wire is a special highly conductive flat wire that is to be soldered onto the front and back of each solar cell.  A solar cell is like a battery having a positive and a negative terminal.  The cell’s negative terminal is its front (the darker side with 2 lines running down its length).  The positive terminal is the back (crystalline cells usually have square solar points at the back).  So the first thing to do is to solder your tab wires onto the front and back of each solar cell. 

Make sure that each length of tab wire you use is double the length of the cell.  This is so that you can solder the tab wires from the front of the first cell onto the solder points at the back of the next solar cell.  Join 6 solar cells in this way.  This forms a string of cells.  Your solar cell strings will be arranged into a 6x6 matrix.  But each string must face opposite ends of the box so that you can connect each string to the other in series.  To do that, you need a copper wire that is soldered perpendicularly onto the tab wires of the first cell in the first string.  This extends to the bottom of the last cell in the second string.  Thus the negative terminal of the cell in the first string is connected to the positive terminal of the cell in the next string.  Join all 6 strings in this way.

Once the paint in your box is completely dry, you can glue each cell to the base of the panel and fit your panel into the box.  Just use double sided tape at the center of each cell to glue them to your base.  Your base should be screwed tightly into your box.  At this point, you can test your solar panel by bringing it out into the sun.  Join your copper wires to the terminals of a voltmeter and you should get a reading.  If not, examine your connections again.  When all is working, attach a blocking diode to the circuit so that the electricity does not flow back to the solar cells from the battery.

The third piece of equipment in your home solar system is the battery.  Choose a deep cycle battery like a nickel-cadmium one.  Your solar panel is to be connected to the battery so that it can store the electricity generated by the solar panel.  But before the battery, you need to install a charge controller.  This will ensure your battery lasts as long as possible. 

The final piece of equipment comes after the battery.  The electricity generated by your solar panel is in the form of DC current but your appliances at home use AC current.  Thus after the battery, you need to install an inverter to convert DC to AC.

These are all the components of your home solar system and how to fix them together.

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