Should You Buy or Build Solar Panels?
Home solar panels can pay for themselves in just 2.5 years
If you’re interested in going the alternative energy route, it remains a tough choice to make as to whether or not to purchase or build solar panels for your home. Buying ready-made solar panels from your local home improvement store may seem like the easy choice but wait till you check out the price. Pre-assembled solar panels cost at least ten times that of doing it yourself solar panels. Realistically, solar panels can be built in a weekend with the help of a family member or a good friend. To understand why it’s a great choice to build your own solar panels from scratch, it’s important to first realize how simple a solar panel actually is.
The Truth About Solar Panels For Homes
Option 1: Let The Solar Company Do Everything
NOT RECOMMENDED: It takes 15-20 years of solar usage for you to break even on your initial upfront cost
Even with government rebates and incentives, the initial cost still remains substantial. In California, after rebates, a system that will power the average home will run about $20,000 to install.
If you wish to make use of solar power in your home without the high costs, give some thought to building and installing solar panels on your own. Due to cheap availability of components needed to make these panels and good DIY instructional manuals, thousands of homeowners have done just that.
Option 2: Buy Solar Panel Kits
ONLY RECOMMENDED FOR: Smaller applications such as a solar battery charger or a small 60W stand-alone solar system used to power small appliances. This is not the option to consider if you would like to have a grid-connected solar power system. Since you are not connecting this solar panel to the mains, no professional installation is required.
Solar panel kits come complete with everything you need – the solar panels, instructions, solar inverter, and other hardware required to bring solar energy to your home. It’s plug n play easy but there’s a catch.
While these are great for starters as your first standalone solar panel but if you have intentions for solar energy to totally replace your grid-bought electricity, then solar panel kits just don’t cut it. Store-bought solar kits are designed to remain as stand-alone solar panels instead of a full-blown whole house grid-connected solar power system. The hardware provided such as the inverter is only good for that one solar panel it came with. So in essence, you can’t “add-on” more solar panels to your system.
Option 3: Build Your Own DIY Solar Panels + Professional Solar Installation
MOST RECOMMENDED: 3-5 years of payback time only, cost 10 times less
The third option is to learn about solar panels and build them on your own. While this process may sound more difficult, it is actually the most cost-effective way to bring solar energy into your home. Additionally, it isn’t as hard as you might think. With the right resources, the right materials and the right attitude, almost anyone can easily learn how to make solar panels.
After you are done with building your own DIY solar panels, hire a professional solar installer. When you call in the experts, they cover a whole host of other responsibilities. Besides the obvious of doing the mounting of the solar panels on your roof and performing the proper electrical work, they also help you to apply for the right permits, agreements, & incentives.
In a nutshell, the best option for any homeowner to obtain a home solar power system is to build their own solar panels then hire a professional solar installer to do the dangerous and skilled work.
Follow these 3 steps if you wish you to setup a home solar system in the most affordable way possible…
Step 1: Get 3 hours worth of HD video tutorials teaching you step-by-step how to build your first solar panel. From then on, once you are familiar with the process, you can easily churn out 2-3 solar panels every weekend. Before long, you would have a good number of solar panels working for you, cutting down or even eliminating your energy bill. The quality of your DIY solar panels will be comparable to the quality and durability of factory-made solar panels as long as you follow these instructions.
Step 2: Get the best quotes for professional solar installation. Do mention that you will be using your own solar panels for the installation.
Step 3: Kick back, smile and enjoy the savings from your DIY Solar Panels!
Solar Panels Cost and Solar Payback Period
Do I Receive Enough Sun For Solar?
The following map demonstrates the daily average solar energy production per meter square of solar panel, across the USA.
How many solar panels do we need?
The average monthly electricity consumption for a U.S. home is 958 kilowatthours (kWh) per month or 32 kWh per day. Looking at the map above, the average solar energy generated per meter sqaure is 5.0kWh. Therefore, we will need 6 square meters of solar panels to provide for 100% of the electricity needs of the average US home.
How many solar panels is needed to make up for a surface area of 6 square meters? A typical “150 watt“ solar panel is about a square meter in size. So we need around six 150 watt solar panels here.
Quick Exercise 1- How Many Solar Panels Do You Need?
- Go get your electricity bill and see how many kilowatt hours you use monthly and daily. (eg. 32kWh/day)
- Figure what your objective is – to totally eliminate your energy bill or just to slash it by half? (eg. Eliminate)
- Figure out how many solar panels you need. Take your total daily energy usage in kWh and divide it by the 5.0 if you live in the yellow region on the map. (eg. 32kWh/day divided by 5.0 gives me approx. 6 m2). This is the surface area of solar panels you need. Since 1 m2 is equivalent to one 150 watt solar panel, multiple your square meter figure by 150 watts to find the power required from your solar power system (eg. 6 m2 x 150 watt = 900 watt).
Quick Exercise 2 - Calculating Solar Payback Period
My electricity consumption is 1000 kWh/month and my bill is $150/month (at 15¢/kWh)
My objective is to eliminate my energy bill
I need 15 solar panels of 60 watt each for me to achieve that
Cost of 15 solar panels = 9 x $100 = $900 (Will cost five to ten times more if bought from the solar company)
Cost of Power Inverter & other hardware = $700 (Like this pure sine wave inverter on Amazon)
Cost of Professional Installation = $900
Payback period = $2500/$150 = 17 months = 1.5 years (Total Solar Panels Cost divided by my monthly bill)
DIY Solar Panels Provide The Most Affordable Option
When I said that building panels yourself is ten times cheaper than buying one, it wasn’t an exaggeration. Let’s take a 
look at how much this same solar system would cost if professionally built and installed.
While the cost of 15 diy solar panels as calculated above look pretty hefty, the same solar panels (a 900 watt system) professionally built and installed would cost you TEN TIMES at $9,000 given that solar companies charge you $10 per watt (900 watts x $10 per watt = $9,000).
There is no reason to pay those kinds of prices when the materials for a home solar power system are so readily available and cheap to buy.
The payback period is the number of years it takes to recoup your upfront cost. The savings you enjoy every month adds up and eventually pay off for solar panels. In the above example, it only requires 1.5 years to recoup the upfront cost of $2500 for my complete system consisting of 15 DIY solar panels, solar power inverter and professional installation.
How Do Solar Panels Work?
3 Options for Home Solar Power Systems
There are three types of home solar power systems available:
1. Off Grid Solar Panel System– This type of solar power system is a stand-alone system that uses backup batteries to store any unused energy. The energy stored inside the batteries can be used for nighttime and for days where the sun isn’t shining as much. An off grid system is independent and separate from any power supply, making it an ideal choice for those who live in remote areas where electricity is unavailable.
2. Grid Tie Solar Panel System– This is the most popular choice. With this system, you can supplement your grid-bought electricity with your solar power. And when you reach the point where you generate more than you need, the excess electricity can be sold back to the grid in a process termed as net metering.
3. Grid Tie with Battery Backup Solar Panel System – This is an excellent system for those times of power outages (which some areas of the country experience more often than others). Besides the battery pack, it is exactly the same as the previous option. This system is not as efficient or popular as the previous option because batteries have the tendency to lose their charge over time.
