DIY Solar Panel Kits

Would it be possible to help slow down the effects of global warming by creating about 50-100 giant ice cube makers in the artic area. It would be like an ice machine found in fast food places, where it makes the ice on its own and drops into a huge bucket, except it would fall back into the ocean. Using solar panels and the water from the ocean, ppl could come to do maintenance on once a month, or monitor them from far. Huge corporations like Coke, McDonalds, etc, and factories that make lots of pollution and have fines to pay or what ever penalties they get could go towards the cost of building and maintaining and ice machine. This would not only help the polar bears and other wild life, but it would it would create jobs and it would probably be tax deducible not to mention good publicity for who ever participated in this.
So if someone out there has power and influence or knows of a way to make this a reality, please let me know, but if you just want the points and don’t really care take your points and move on.

Interesting idea. Not sure if it is possible.

OMG
I am gobsmacked and in utter disbelief at the absolute naive, half-baked, already-invented-and-implemeted, cost prohibitive crock of ideas I have found on YouTube as entrants for "Google’s 10 to the 100 project".

Quickly - Google is wanting to spend US$10m in developing up to 5 ideas the public have for helping change the world. Categories include helping via education, community, energy, housing, health etc. Entry is via submitting a form explaining your idea and if you wish, a 30 sec video on YouTube to accompany it. BTW it’s hilarious to see people say at the 28 sec mark after a lengthy suck up to Google "so my idea is…" BZZZZ. Too late. 30 secs is up buddy…

I entered the search terms "google 10 project" and started looking at some ideas.
Truth be known I was hoping I’d find loads of excellent ideas and videos to scare me out of doing my own for my idea.

OMG. I have yet to find ANYTHING that is remotely inspiring or indeed evidence that brains inhabit these people’s heads. Honestly, try yourself by looking some up on YouTube.

A brief run down of the ideas I’ve seen so far. Remember the key points when considering the vaibility of these ideas 1. $10m is not the prize to the person with the best idea, it is funding to get up to 5 ideas off and running.
2. It is for UNIQUE ideas not ones that have already been tried or are in the process of being implemented
3. Consider the costs:

1. Put satellites in the sky and send messages to satellite dishes so that people can communicate all around the world.
2. Get rid of obesity. That was the whole idea. Just get rid of it…
3. Use all the left over food from schools and restaurants and give it to homeless people.
4. Google should get everyone to send in their old computers, they will fix them up and sell them to 3rd world countries for $20 each
5. Build a city on water
6. Build a car that runs on water
7. Every family in the west adopts a family in poverty and helps pay for things for them
8. Put solar panels on everyones roofs and then they can sell the excess energy to the electric companies and get paid instead of paying
9. Google should invent a game to teach people that giving is better than taking. Do a giving action - you get points. Do a taking action - you lose points.
10. Fill jet engines with water and "some sort of coolant" so that when it runs it produces "some sort of cool air" instead of creating heat
11. Use the science behind "rubbing your hands together creates heat which is energy" to power the world (granted this was a teenager, so I’ll forgive the lack of science/energy transference knowledge)
12. Wind turbines on Jupiter
13. Replace all pavements and roads with removeable panels so that road works don’t distrupt traffic while they break up the concrete to fix pipes etc
14. Google should get companies to pay them for every click from a Google website and that money should go to charities.
15. People should have funraisers (sic) and give the money to help turn cloudy skies blue

The only decent ideas I have found so far are an online/interactive Google University with recognised degrees utilising all of Google’s products. FLAW I think more than $10m is going to be needed to even get this off the ground and there are a lot of online universities already, albeit not on the scale of this person’s idea.
The other idea is a light bulb that utilises LED’s to reduce energy useage by 80%. FLAW energy efficient light bulbs have been invented, the problem is the cost efficiency to produce them, the cost for people to buy them and the fact that electric companies (and this addresses the flaw in some of the ideas above) are often a huge source of income for governments and surprise, surprise if they are private, they kinda like making money! So turning our world into a "free power" world is going to take a lot of persuasion, a looooooooooong time, a hell of a lot more than $10m and perhaps some peace-love-and-mung-beans type drugs to induce philanthropy.

Yes, yes I know a lot of you are saying - hey I don’t you see you trying an idea.
Well actually I do have an idea and I’m going to do my video and entry this week. I am truly motivated after what I have seen today!

Now I’ll be interested to read people’s comments and see how many think the above ideas I knocked the crap out of are actually brilliant and worthy of the Google project.

And how many don’t know what sic means grammatically.

My god, there’s a list of total rubbish for you. Wind turbines on jupiter for $2m? ROFL.

Good luck with your idea. At least you understand the guidelines.

Would it be possible to help slow down the effects of global warming by creating about 50-100 giant ice cube makers in the artic area. It would be like an ice machine found in fast food places, where it makes the ice on its own and drops into a huge bucket, except it would fall back into the ocean. Using solar panels and the water from the ocean, ppl could come to do maintenance on once a month, or monitor them from far. Huge corporations like Coke, McDonalds, etc, and factories that make lots of pollution and have fines to pay or what ever penalties they get could go towards the cost of building and maintaining and ice machine. This would not only help the polar bears and other wild life, but it would it would create jobs and it would probably be tax deducible not to mention good publicity for who ever participated in this.
So if someone out there has power and influence or knows of a way to make this a reality, please let me know, but if you just want the points and don’t really care take your points and move on.

interesting idea. but an ice maker requires energy, and the source of this energy will determine the effect the plan would have on global warming. if the source is non renewable and creates greenhouse gas emissions, it’s not helping. if the energy source is renewable and does not create greenhouse gas emissions, it may have a tiny impact on the increase in global greenhouse effect.

I’m looking at writing an Article on people’s experience with Solar Panel companies.
If their experience was good or bad if the workmanship was great or average etc..
Any help would be really appreciated..

Thanks very much

Mits

http://www.build-your-own-solarpanels.com

try instructables.com
there are a lot of revues on them

I am doing a big project for school, and I have decided to do it on solar panels. I am new to the subject but have done some research on it; I would like to buy a single panel, a charge controller, an inverter and a battery, to charge a simple lamp. My question is if the items in the links will work together and if the panel will produce electricity?

THE INVERTER:

http://www.tooltopia.com/solar-pi-1500x.aspx?utm_source=googlebase&utm_medium=cse&utm_term=SOLPI1500X&utm_campaign=googlebase_18u

THE CHARGE CONTROLLER:

http://www.solarhome.org/sunsaver6chargecontrollerwithlvd.aspx

THE PANEL:

http://www.solarhome.org/bsp1watt12vcrystalline.aspx

I haven’t yet found a battery. Also, if you know any way to get cheaper items but for the same efficiency, please tell me. Thanks.
I’ve changed the inverter to this one:

http://www.tooltopia.com/atd-tools-5950.aspx

Sounds like fun.

A 1-watt panel doesn’t need a charge controller, though. In fact, it may take more than 1 watt to power the charge controller. With a low-wattage panel, you can just connect the panel directly to the battery. A 7 amp-hour gel cell (the kind used in burglar alarms) would be good for this purpose. The panel is too small to charge a car battery.

The gel cell should power that inverter, but only for a few minutes. If you want to be more impressive, look for a low power, 12-volt device. An iPod plus a 12-volt car adapter would be an example.

Count how many electronic devices you own. Now count how many of those you use on a daily bases. Now think about where all of the power to run those items comes from. As simple as it is, many Americans never think about where the power to run their personal gadgets, there only worry is about how big the bill is going to be at the end of the month. The truth is, Americans are the ones who need to think about energy consumption the most, because America uses far more energy per capita than any other nation in the world. This is because we have more money to burn, and we are completely energy dependent. If we want out world to continue to thrive, we as Americans are going to have to start using less energy as a whole and building more ways to reduce dependencies on oil and other unrenewable, dirty resources. The purpose of this paper is to inform the public about the salvations and pitfalls of different sources of renewable energy and the dangerous we will face if we don’t switch to it.
•Wind
Wind is great renewable resource; in this section of my paper I will outline the pros and cons of wind energy.
Wind is energy is completely clean, inexpensive to build, and produces a reasonable power output. However, wind energy can only work efficiently in areas where there is a more or less constant wind. Wind energy works the best in places like California where there is mountain ranges where valleys get constant wind blowing through them. Wind energy does work in Iowa though, mostly you will see wind farms on hills, but if you’ve ever seen an old farm it is most likely that they had wind energy! Wind energy is very old; it in the 18th century to pump water.

•Solar
Solar energy is one of my favorite sources of energy. It can be mounted on a roof to create clean power all through the day. Solar energy has several dehabilitating pitfalls though. Solar energy creates enough power to easily run a home, but it creates most of the energy when the occupants aren’t actually home. So a solar panel will run your appliances such as your fridge for free, but in the evening when you get home, turn on all the lights, and the sun is down, solar panels aren’t going to do you any good. So in order to combat this problem, solar panels would have to have batteries, this is completely possible, but unfortunately the batteries would have to be quite big, and very costly to replace once they stopped holding a charge. Solar energy would be great for the Midwest and other less populated areas but in order for solar energy to power places like New York City, you’re going to have to convince Montana to give up half their land for sole solar panel use for the “greater good”.
•Water Power and hydrogen power.

Water power is another very old renewable resource; it was use thousands of years ago to turn big wheels that were dipped in rivers to grind things up. Water power today is more tuned towards dams; dams make good energy, but they harm the environment more than any other renewable resource. Building dams causes the area in front of the dam to flood, resulting in loss of habitat for many an animal. Hydrogen power would be absolutely awesome if we had a source of pure hydrogen closer than the sun to harvest from. The only practical use for hydrogen energy is to use excess energy from solar panels to transform water into hydrogen; this may be a substitute for batteries for solar panels.

•Nuclear energy

In my mind this is the energy that has the potential to save humanity. Nuclear energy puts out tremendous amounts of power and has only a little waste. The main problem with nuclear energy is idiots who are terrified of being saved by it because it might “blow up”. Other problems include: the storage of the small amount of byproduct, eventually we will run out of Uranium (not a pressing problem), and nuclear plants take a long time to build even if they were to pushed through to build immediately, which never happens. German is currently 80% dependent on Nuclear energy and I think we need to follow their lead.
In conclusion, we as people have a responsibility to protect the world and to protect ourselves. In order to accomplish this we need to move forward and invest heavily in completely renewable resources, and stop popping out kids. As previously stated, I believe nuclear power will be our salvation, but we need to invest in all renewable resources; wind energy for California, solar for the Midwest, hydro for places with large rivers, and nuclear for the New Yorkers.

Generally speaking, when writing a formal essay or research paper, you want to avoid phrases like "I think," and "In my opinion." State your facts as facts and leave out anything that isn’t a fact. Unless you’ve been specifically instructed to share your personal opinion about your topic, then you shouldn’t express it in a paper.

I am really interested in solar panels. Is it possible to make your own solar panel cell.
I have looked on the internet, but they only tell you how to put solar panels on a board.
How do you build one? What are some websites on how to do it?

You don’t build one without extremely expensive manufacturing equipment, This can’t be done with just a soldering iron and a schematic diagram.

Hey, I want to become more ‘greener’ and need a site with good, solid information on DIY solar panels and kits, and possibly even videos on how to do so. Has anyone got good links?

Hey, I think that http://solarpoweredgarden-lights.com is really good. I purchased the kit for about $100 and I can tell you, I reccommend it to everyone! Also, there is loads of FREE information aswell, and videos lol.

I have a one bed, small static caravan and want to heat water,and use electric lights etc.Would it cost me much to install it, I am not bad at DIY.

Using solar electricity to heat water is not cost effective, nor is running an electric fridge. Heat and cold take a lot of electricity. Those are better run on propane. But using solar for lights, TV, and other items in the caravan is perfectly doable. You can take a look at some kits that are easy to install at http://www.altestore.com/store/Kits-and-Package-Deals/RV-Solar-Packages/c572/.

To see what size kit you need, you can use a RV calculator, http://www.carmanah.com/calculators/mobile/mobilepowerdist/default.aspx?id=ALTESTORE&f=false.

People who tell you it’s not possible or practical don’t know what they are talking about. It is done all the time, and not just by rich people, not by a long shot.

I am very interested in making solar panels in Karachi, Pakistan. But cant figure out where i get solar cells? If there is some DIY methods please tell me.

you do google search and contact the companies which manufactures solar panel..or contact an expert in this field..