Brian McConnell has an interesting article on the O'Reilly network about how he took his house off the utility grid. I've been thinking along similar lines, although I don't have the budget to throw around that Brian obviously has, and living in the UK rather than California I've been thinking about wind turbines rather than photovoltaics. Although I'm not exactly alone (via Digg) in thinking that wind turbines are a good solution.
Of course you can always make your own solar cell (via Make: Blog), but it's not exactly going to produce enough power to run your house. That said cheap 9 or 12V panels for prototyping (via Make: Blog) are coming down in price rather dramatically, and it looks like larger installations are about to become more efficient, at less cost. Time to think about dropping off the grid...
hi everyone Do you want your own solar panels?
ReplyDeleteIt will take you 10 Years - to pay back on Solar Panels
If you want to make this time short to 1-2 Years
There is a website that explains how to Build you own http://topdiysolarpanels.com/blog home solar panels.