Solar Panel Home

If you want to go fully “off the grid,” then you might think that the next step after building your own solar panels is to build your own solar cells.

But you need to consider carefully whether you *really* need to do it. It’s nice to say, “I built my own solar cells!” but it’s quite time-consuming and these days they can be purchased very cheaply off of eBay.

Just to make one solar cell will require nearly an hour – and one panel might have hundreds or thousands of cells. Unless you really want to commit the time and money to do that, you’re probably better off buying.

But if you truly want to proceed with making your own solar cells, here are the materials you’ll need:

1) Copper sheet – half a square foot should do. 2) Two clip leads. 3) Micro-ammeter measuring between 10 and 50 microamperes. 4) Either an electric stove, or some type of heating plate to put on your gas stove. 5) A large jar or plastic bottle. 6) A few tablespoons of salt. 7) A bucket of water. Sandpaper. 9) To cut the copper, you’ll need metal shears.

First, clean the copper sheet with the sandpaper and wash both it and your hands before proceeding. Then, cut the sheet using the metal shears to the approximate size of your heating plate or stove.

Once you have your copper piece, put it on your heating plate and turn the heat to “high.” It should take 30 minutes to produce a blackened sheet, and then another 20 minutes for it to cool so you can handle it.

You’ll see black and red spots all over, after the oxide disappears.

Then, use your first copper piece as a reference and cut another piece from your sheet that’s around the same size as the first one and ensure that they can fit into a plastic bottle without touching.

Now, connect a lead to the copper piece that you heated up, and make sure the other end is connected to the negative terminal of your micro-ammeter. Connect the positive terminal to your “uncooked” copper piece.

Now, combine the salt and the water you have and pour them into your jar or plastic bottle, ensuring that it is filled up to just below the top of both sheets.

Finally, test your new solar cell to see if it produces current in the sunlight. You should be able to see at least 10-50 microamperes of current if you did it properly.

Now the hard part ” if you want to power one single 100-watt light bulb, you will have to repeat this process enough times to produce 80,000 square meters of solar cells. A great experience, yes. A practical solution? Not necessarily.