If the cost of buying and installing solar panels still seems out of reach you might be thinking about trying to make your own solar panels.  Can you really make your own solar panels? The answer to that is yes, and no.

You can make some small non-PV types of solar panels on your own.  You can use these solar panels in a homemade solar water heating system or sometimes even in a solar heating system. You can use homemade solar panels for passive heating but you cannot make PV solar cells capable of providing enough energy to power your entire home on your own. Consumers just don’t have access to the kinds of materials that are needed to create high intensity PV solar cells.

PV cells are simple in design which makes some people think that they would be easy to make but the materials are very specific and need to be produced in exactly the right conditions in order to generate electricity.  You won’t be able to find the ultra concentrated crystalline silicon that you need to make a PV solar cell at your local home improvement store or the conducting metals that you need at the local discount store. 

If you want to try out using solar power or jus

t decrease your energy bills by making your own solar heating panels you can do that on your own.  There are kits that you can buy containing the supplies and instructions on how to build your own solar heating cells or you can pick up the materials yourself at the local home improvement store and get free instructions on how to build a solar heating cell on the Internet.

Be very careful using directions off of the Internet on how to build a solar heating cell. This is because chances are good that those instructions haven’t been very well tested and the solar cell that you build might not even work. Be sure though that when you are looking for instructions on how to build your own solar heating cell look for feedback from people that have used the directions that you are thinking about using to build a working solar heating cell. This way you have some kind of proof that it actually does work. 

If you don’t want to put the time and effort into building a solar heating cell some home improvement stores, hardware stores, or electronics stores sell pre-assembled solar heating panels that you can buy to create your own solar heating system. There are also stores specializing in solar energy systems that can sell you what you need for whatever level of do-it-yourself involvement you are looking for.