If you're new to building or want to start building your own solar panel to save money, then you found the right article to read. Going green is great, but buying photovoltaic panels can be very costly. Currently, PV panels prices are still high over .00/watt and slowly decreasing. That's a great thing, but for now people like you and I need another alternative, a cheaper way to build it. So what materials are required and how do you build a solar panel?
First, you must purchase solar cells, which are the component inside a PV panel that generates power. Silicon solar cells come in multicrystalline and monocrystalline, the monocrystalline being the more pure and powerful cell. There are other types of solar cells as well, but the most common solar cells used to build DIY solar panels are the 3" x 6" multicrystalline solar cells. These 3x6 cells come with about 1.6 - 1.8 watts of power. 36 of these 3x6 PV cells can be used to produce one 60 watt solar panel, which is powerful enough to power a laptop. Usually these 3x6 solar cells are sold in 108 pcs and can produce 3 solar panels with a total of 180 watts of pure solar power.
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Next, you'll need to purchase solar ribbon or PV wires. These wires are used to connect and interconnect your 3x6 solar cells together in an array so they can be used to build your DIY solar panel. These solar ribbons are known as tabbing wire and bus wire. The tabbing wire is thinner in width and is used to interconnect the 3x6 solar cells together. While, the bus wire is wider in width and is used to connect the array of 3x6 solar cells together. The usually length of tabbing wire comes in 50 feet, while the bus wire comes in 10 feet.
When you receive the materials you can finally build your DIY solar panel with the 3x6 cells. So, how exactly do you connect the 3x6 solar cells together with the PV wires? It's easier than you think. It's basically connecting the negative terminals to the positives in a huge array of PV cells and then you get one set of negative terminal and one set of positive terminal.
If you take a look at the front facing side of your cells, the blue side is the negative (-) side with 2 white bus bars. Behind the PV cells is the positive (+) side with 6 square white bus wires. To start the connection of the cells, you get the tabbing wire and cut in 6" lengths and then using a soldering iron, solder the tabbing wire onto the negative side or blue side of the wafer. The PV cell has two bus bars, so you must tab both the bus bars with the tabbing wire.
After you're done, grab another piece and turn both cells around exposing the positive sides. With the already tabbed unit, get the extended tabbing wire and solder it onto the new cell's positive bus bars. After they are soldered on, they should connect together without falling apart. Next, you will need to build 4 arrays of 9 PV cells. Once you're done with building each array, you connect them together with the bus wire at each end of the array. There will be three parts at which each array will break; you will need to solder the bus wire to those areas.
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