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If you are looking for the answer to the questions “How Much Are Solar Panels Worth?” and “Should I Use Homemade Cheap Solar Cells or Industrial Solar Panels?” read this article to find out the right solution for you.

How Much Are Solar Panels Worth?As you know, solar cells are good for our planet, as they can generate clean energy from a renewable resource. However, one reason why they are not as widely used as they should be is their price.

You might have heard or seen different types of solar panels with a wide range of prices. It can vary between 100 and 50,000 dollars.

Therefore, although interested, you may wonder if it is worth either to buy ready-made solar panels or build your own cheap solar panel system.

Readymade Solar Cells So you may start from as low as 50 dollars that will be enough to run one or a few electrical equipment. These panels will worth $5 to $15 per watt. The increase in cost is usually proportional to the increase in production capacity. For instance, if you want to buy solar cells with the ability of about 1 kilowatt electrical power production it can cost you up to $10,000. Home-made solar cells Of course, homemade solar panels are a lot cheaper than ready-made systems. For example, if you want to create a solar panel system that would provide the entire house with electricity it will cost you between about $1000 and $5000. This expenditure includes the price of a do-it-yourself kit and installation charges as well.

Conclusion:

Now you know the answer to the question: “How Much Are Solar Panels Worth?” and which option you should go to save your money.

Unless you have been living under a stone recently you will have noticed that Oil prices are going up almost every day. That’s not just bad news for motorists though, for the list of things that are made from oil is unbelievably long. Everything from cosmetics to carrier bags, food, paint and plastics; the list just goes on and on. Apart from the price of gas, though, most of us will notice the rising price of oil being reflected in higher utility bills. But help is at hand from an unlikely source – the sun. Thanks to some clever technology we can now use solar cell power to provide us with electricity to heat our homes and power our lights.

Solar cells have been around for many years now – probably much longer than you think, but it is only with today’s advances in technology and, of course the rising oil price, that solar cell power is becoming economically viable. Previous solar cell designs didn’t produce much in the way of electricity for the surface area they took up. They were expensive to produce, and most of them didn’t work efficiently in anything less than direct sunlight.

Today’s solar cells, however, thanks to advances in material technology, and electronic control systems are much more efficient. It is now possible to generate sufficient solar cell power to heat water for your washing and bathing, if not your central heating, on even cloudy days. Solar cells are obviously most efficient in direct bright sunlight, but this is no longer a necessity.

Solar cell power is best suited to producing hot water. This hot water can then be stored and used for bathing and cooking etc, or it can power your central heating, although it is often necessary to supplement the solar cell power with a conventional electricity supply, especially in larger houses. Normal hot water heaters often consume almost a half of a house’s energy. Therefore, by replacing a gas or electrically powered hot water heater with a solar cell power heater you can significantly reduce your energy bill. In some states you may even qualify for tax relief on such a system considerably, as well as making the owners eligible for a tax cut in select states.

Todays solar power cells are also becoming cheaper. For the price of a years utility bills, it is now possible to build a solar power system for your house that will give a lifetimes supply of free electricity with virtually no maintenance.

Although there are many individual ways in which solar cells can be used, there are still only 4 basic applications to use them. Essentially, any way a solar cell can be used will fall into a category that I shall briefly describe below.Utility Grid Connections – This is when solar cells supplement energy needs for the house or commercial business, being hooked into the regular electrical grid and supplying power directly through the lines. If more electricity is generated by solar than is needed, many electrical companies will give credit and/or refunds for the extra power sent back into the lines.A Grid Interactive System – When solar cells are used to maintain and charge up battery back-up systems for household or commercial usage. Any person or business would use a system like this to insure continued power if main grid electricity was shut down for any reason. Computer banks might benefit greatly from this technology.Remote Solar Cell Usage – Solar cells and panels used as an electricity supply in places where electrical service has not been developed yet. Wilderness cabins, undeveloped landscape and 3rd world countries would all benefit with using solar power in these remote areas.Product Applications for Consumers – Basically the use of solar cells to replace battery applications in a wealth of products. Things like calculators, cap fans, and any low voltage toy can be made to run off of solar cells saving on battery use and consequently, landfill issues for discarded batteries.With the newer higher efficiency solar cells and panels on the market today, these applications have become more common and useful than ever before.

Tracking advances in solar cell technology, I’ve stumbled across another landmark efficiency gain.  This one, obtained by switching from conventional screen printing to a non-contact aerosol jet printer, has upped efficiencies by 2 percent on thin-film solar cells.Thin-film solar cells (TFSC) are defined as solar cells made by depositing one or more thin layers (nanometers to micrometers) of photovoltaic material on a substrate. These thin-film cells are classed as: amorphous silicon, cadmium telluride, copper indium gallium selenide (CIGS), polysilicon, dye-sensitized solar cells, or organic (plastic, or polymer) solar cells – the latter three still in development stages.Printing is a deposition method, and the use of aerosol jet printing could raise the copper indium gallium selenide efficiency – already reported at 9.5 percent (with reports from NREL in excess of 19 percent) – to a value competitive with silicone-based solar at about half the cost to manufacture.The advance, coming from the Fraunhofer Institute’s Solar Energy Systems in Germany, reports that using an Optomec printer enabled thinner strata deposition of metallic, semiconducting and insulating inks via nanoscale pigments developed by Applied Nanotech Inc. enabled efficiences in excess of 20 percent, as compared to previous figures of 16 to 18 percent.Fraunhofer also used the printer to fabricate front-side metallization lines on otherwise conventional solar cells, which enabled it to shrink the metallization area and boost efficiency by reducing shading losses.Screen-printed solar cells can be manufactured faster than ink-jet printing methods, and the Optomec’s 40-nozzle head can print a solar cell in under 3 seconds. What this means to you, the consumer, is a future of truly affordable solar. What it means to the environment is of inestimable value.Of course, waiting to save a few bucks doesn’t make a lot of sense in terms of the environment. News coming out of the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Poznan, Poland (December 5 to 12) indicates that climate change is not only upon us, but likely to reach that critical “tipping point” in as little as a decade.

You must be well aware of solar energy. All the energy that comes from the sun is termed as solar energy. It is a well known fact that in this contemporary world, prices of almost every product are increasing like anything. The prices of fuels and electricity are creating a stress on the budget of a common man. To get rid of the increasing prices of electricity and to reduce your electricity bill you can avail the benefit of solar energy. It is a fact that solar energy is natural and thus do not show any adverse effect on the environment.

Generally solar cells are used to capture solar energy. Solar panels consist of solar cells which capture the solar energy from the sun. This energy is then used for various purposes like lighting etc. There are several other solar powered appliances available like solar water heater which can help you in saving electricity and money. For getting these products all you have to do is to visit SolarCellDepot, so that you can get the best solar powered products.

SolarCellDepot is among the best choices one can get. This company has earned a reputation in the field of solar appliances and is known for its quality.

The solar cells and solar water heater provided by this company are of excellent quality and can be very efficient in reducing your electricity bills.

Take a look at some of the benefits you can avail from SolarCellDepot:

1)      Best quality: this company provides quality products to the customers. The solar cells and solar water heater provided by this company are made up of latest technology and can serve your needs in the best manner. By using solar water heater you can easily enjoy the pleasure of hot water without wasting money on water heaters or electricity.

2)      Environment friendly: the solar cells and solar water heater of this company is made up in such a way that it do not put any adverse effect on the environment. These solar powered appliances not only help in saving the electricity but also help in reducing the percentage of pollution.

3)      Improved quality of living: the solar powered products of this company like the solar cells or solar water heater help in saving money which ultimately enhance the quality of living. One can live a better life without having much stress on the budget.

4)      Long life: the products of this company are very reliable and one can use them for years. Some of the products like solar water heater or the solar cells can serve your needs for more than 25 years. The solar powered products of this company harness with your life and benefit you for many years.

5)      Customer satisfaction guarantee: SolarCellDepot also provides a complete customer satisfaction guarantee. You can easily get a good deal at a reasonable price. The prices of this company are much lower as compared to several other firms or companies.

6)      Complete information: this company also provides complete information to the customer regarding any of the queries. You can also avail the benefit of live chat with any of the representative of the company and can discuss your queries. They have a team of professionals who will provide you the correct answer of your query so that you may not face any difficulty.

How Solar Cells Save the Environment

Sure, we all know that solar panels are green and clean, but how really green are they? Wouldn’t it be nice to actually see some facts and figures for a change instead of hearing phrases like solar cells save oil or solar cells reduce air pollutants? Anyone can say that about anything green, but here we will now look at some honest to goodness hard facts to ponder.

First things first, a 2.5kw solar panel array, which is very common, will supply about 380 kilowatts per month calculated with 5 sun hours per day.  The average house, meanwhile, burns about 700 kilowatts of electricity per month.  In raw terms, those electrical savings will amount to over 300 barrels of oil saved per year, or the equivalent mileage of 270,000 driven miles.

solar panel

Want more details? Having that system saves 2 tons of coal burning which generates the same amount of electricity. Needless to say, that cuts down on the equivalent amount of acid rain emissions, and literally reduces all greenhouse gases by over one quarter of a million pounds! Over 25 years, in a botanical and environmental sense, this is like planting 5000 trees, doing all that good from the roof of your house!

Now,  couple those figures with the rising cost of electricity, and you are doing just as much good for your pocketbook as you are for the safe environment.Those are just the facts. But maybe best of all, knowing about all of this and then going solar gives you something much better then just facts, it gives you some piece of mind.

Currently, most solar technologies are delivered via silicon crystals, whose highly refined nature and relative scarcity make them expensive components in the solar process. This makes the end-product equally expensive, and cost is one of the factors limiting the use of solar panels to generate energy.

Plastic, or polymer, solar cells are relative newcomers to solar technology, but their potential advantages – lower cost, lighter weight and greater flexibility – promise to sweep the solar industry, once sourcing and manufacturing are refined.Polymers are plastic-type substances, usually made from petroleum. Organic plastics, typically represented by such products as amber and shellac (or tree sap), may soon be available from cellulose, or food products like corn, making organic polymer solar technology not only inexpensive but environmentally friendly; i.e., disposable.

Konarka Technologies, Inc., recently announced that their flagship product, Power Plastic®, was rated at 6 percent efficiency. This may not seem like much, but solar panels currently in use rarely boast more than 12- to 14-percent efficiency, and polymer cell technology is still in its infancy. For Konarka to achieve 6 percent with its flexible organic based photovoltaic (PV) solar is truly an important milestone, as co-developer Dr. Alan Heeger of the University of California (Santa Barbara) notes.”This progress gives us confidence that we are on a technology pathway toward the vision of high efficiency, low cost ‘plastic’ solar cells.”

Heeger of Konarka

Heeger, one of the co-founders of Konarka, received the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2000. He and his colleagues at UCSB are currently focused on issues related to the fundamental electronic structure of polymer solar cells, and hopes in the near future to bump that efficiency rating to a full 10 percent, which would make it highly competitive with silicon-based solar.

Another discovery, from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, promises to improve polymer solar material by substituting a silicon atom (or a crystalline) for a carbon atom in the backbone of the polymer. Eventually, says UCLA researcher and co-author Hsiang-Yu Chen, solar cells may be as thin as paper, attachable to any surface, and colored to match different applications.Imagine hanging a solar panel alongside your deck or patio that looks like a Van Gogh!

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A solar cell is a device which changes sunlight into electricity. A more technical term for a solar cell is a photovoltaic cell. The term “photo” derives from the Greek word for “light,” and the term “voltaic” comes from the word “volt” which means “electrical force.” A “cell” is a small receptacle or container containing electrodes which generate power. Thus, a photovoltaic cell is a container that creates electric force, through light. Whereas a solar cell can generate electricity from any light source, its intended use is the collection of solar energy from the sun.

How a Solar Cell Works

The solar cell works as follows: Photons (which are particles of light in sun rays) hit the surface of the solar cell and are absorbed a semiconductor, such as silicon. These photons (bits of sunlight) knock electrons loose from the atoms inside the semiconductor. The photons then push the electrons along, leaving a “gap” in the atom. Another electron is then pulled from an adjacent atom to fill the gap. And so an electrical flow is generated.

The simplicity of this is that one atom has an extra electron, and the other atom is missing one. This is referred to as a “difference in potential.” Nature, wanting to remain balanced, tries to even things out by pulling another electron from the neighboring atom. A solar panel is comprised of a group of solar cells which are linked together to produce the desired amount of electrical energy. A group of solar cells linked together can also be referred to as a “module.” Thus the terms “solar panel,” and “solar module,” are synonymous to each other, and essentially mean the exact same thing. “Solar panel” is the more common term, and “solar module” is the technical term.

solar panel

One can use solar panels individually or one can link several together in order to generate more electricity. When a group of solar panels are linked together, it is called a “solar array”. The more solar panels are included in a solar array, the more power they produce. Solar Power is a clean and virtually unlimited source of energy. I say “virtually unlimited” because the sun itself won’t last forever. But we won’t have to worry about that for the next few billion years. Since solar power is a clean energy source which has been around for decades, one might wonder why its not used more. The answer to this lies partially in the cost of producing solar panels, as well as in the efficiency of the solar panels.

We are currently in the second generation of solar panel technology and verging on the third. A lot has changed since the first generation. Solar panels a are becoming a viable source of clean energy. The solar cells of earlier times were relatively large and bulky compared to our current models. In view of the amount of energy and material required to produce them, and the amount of energy they actually produced, it was more costly to use solar energy than to use fossil fuels. The only exception was in places where little or no fossil fuels were available, such as in space.

With the second-generation solar cells, we attempted to tackle this exact problem. We attempted improve manufacturing techniques so as to reduce the costs, materials and energy needed for the production of solar cells. Recently, major advances have been made in the production of solar cells, which have reduced production costs. One contribution in this area was the development of techniques to coat glass or ceramic materials with very thin layers of semi-conductive substances. This made it possible to produce solar panels using only a fraction of the semi-conductive material that was required earlier.

Solar panel

The production of solar panels using this second-generation technology is referred to as “Thin Film Technology.” Third-generation solar energy technologies are currently being researched and developed. The objective is to improve the power of solar cells even further (while keeping production costs to a minimum) in which case thirty to sixty percent of the sunlight hitting the panels will be converted into electricity. (Currently, solar panels convert only about twenty percent.) But regardless of third generation solar technology, the second-generation solar cell is efficient enough to make solar technology viable – and a host of new solar-powered products have hit the consumer market.

Solar-powered calculators have been in use for a while now, we’ve all seen them. We have even seen a few other novelty devices. But only in the last few years have solar devices come into serious and practical use. The last two years in particular have seen a virtual explosion of solar devices hitting the market. Solar flashlights (I’ve often wandered what use they were), solar-powered radios, and, recently, solar battery chargers.

One can also now find a wide range of portable solar chargers and panels, which are lightweight and easy to transport, yet capable of providing a decent amount of power in even the most remote locations. Solar chargers are becoming a standard part of wilderness survival kits and emergency preparedness kits. All of this is a result of the developments in solar cell technology, and the coming of the Solar Age.