What you must know and do before building a DIY solar PV system for your home, as is described below, will be the foundation for a a system that produces what you hoped for. You can avoid some common pitfalls when building a PV solar system for your home by carefully doing the research up front and getting yourself fully prepared.
1. What is your goal? Do you want to be totally off the grid and self-sufficient? That will require a fairly large system and a big battery bank. I don’t want to discourage you, just be aware of it. Do you want to install just enough solar PV capacity to reduce your electric bill by 40%, 50%, or more? To achieve the optimal combination between reducing your electric bill and having an affordable system is going to take a few iterations between size, cost, tax credits. Are you interested in a DIY solar kit to quickly and easily install at your remote cabin? Then you might not need to read this entire article, unless you are new to solar PV systems. Instead, do some research online, specifically searching for kits for cabins, maybe even RVs . Call the manufacturers and distributors and ask them lots of questions. Come back here if you get stuck.
2. Have you minimized the electric demand of your home? PV panels and batteries are still pretty expensive. You don’t want to spend money on extra PV panels. Let’s look at some numbers: Photovoltaic panels produce between 6-19W/sqft.. Estimated prices for just the panels range from $3.0 to $5.0 per sqft.. (Don’t hold me to it! This is a guesstimate) . Taking these numbers and looking at replacing one 60W incandescent light with a 12W LED light, can lower the panel cost for your DIY PV project by$7.5 (19W output and $3.0/sqft) to $40 (6W output and $5.0/sqft). So if you replace five 60 W incandescent bulbs, you could potentially save up to $240, just for the panels. Replacing incandescent lights with LED lights is just one way to reduce your electric demand. You can also: shut of lights and unused equipment, install motion detectors and/or replace inefficient appliances with highly efficient appliances.
3. Does the roof or yard where you intend to install the PV panels receive enough sunlight? PV panels can produce electricity even with diffuse sunlight. However, the system is more efficient and will provide a higher output if you can maximize direct incident sunlight. You can use one of the many free tool available online to calculate the solar radiation at your site. For all of them you will need to make allowance for any trees or neighboring buildings that cause shading on your photovoltaic panels. PV panel manufacturers will also help you with these calculations.
4. Check what the local requirements are for connecting to the grid. You might need to install a special piece of equipment between your system and the utility meter. Check with your local utility about incentives for PV systems and, very important, if they will buy back your electricity when you are producing more than you are using. Unless of course your goal is to be totally off the grid. At which point the utility will probably not give you any incentive. Also check the following federal tax credits for PV solar systems and state tax credits for solar systems.
5. Just one more thing: education. Knowing about all the whys, hows, whats and wheres will minimize errors. At the minimum, you will be able to better realize when you must ask for help. You will see when something is not as it should be.Attend a couple of classes about solar photovoltaic systems. Many ebooks and books are on the market. The government’s Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy program published a huge amount of very educational and useful information on their site (www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/). It could also be very helpful to invest in a set of videos which show you step by step on how to go about planning and building a DIY solar PV system for your home.
The fun part starts now. Making it real. You have lots of notes and books, and maybe videos that you have studied. You can move forward ,knowing that you are well prepared. Use what you have learned to work with a photovoltaic panel manufacturer or supplier to select the perfect DIY solar PV system for your home.
Before you start a DIY solar PV system for your home, finish the 5 steps and learn the secrets of how to successfully build your own solar PV system.
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