I am going to start a project to run my home lighting for free using normal commercially available products. The plan is to set up 2-3 energy savings lamps with a solar panel and inverter all for under $150 total. The goal is to drop energy consumption in the home. If I can power all the lights in the home from solar alone, the results would be a savings of between 20 to 30% on the electric bill.

Tests have shown that 30% of the average US household electric bill is from lighting alone.

I will be posting plans, sources and results as this project progresses.

I have about 25 years of experience in electricity, and electronics ranging from DIY home made table fan wind generators to solar to radiant energy chargers.

I will be using a variety of lamps ranging from LEDs to 12 volt fluorescent lamps to energy savings bulbs. The batteries used will be simple 12 volt alarm system batteries that are available around the world for relatively low prices. I will use standard off-the-shelf inverters and solar panels.

Now, let's consider that it is currently mid-winter and the worst time for solar. This will be the best time for extreme stress tests on the system.

Let's see what happens...

Well, last night I got home and found my solar panel on the floor. It had fallen out of the window sometime during the day, so the battery obviously did not get fully charged.

But, I decided to hook up my floor lamp to an inverter, which was hooked up to the battery. I was only in the living room for an hour, but the light worked quite well. I am only using a simple 12 Volt 6 Ah alarm battery. It was sitting at 12.5 Volts when I started and dropped to 12.20 and held there while I was using the light. The light was the 50 Watt CFL lamp I just bought.

Later, when I get a proper solar panel, I will put it up on the roof for better charging. Right now, it is only getting about 50% of the available light. It is a good test to see what I can do with that little bit of energy though.

Anyway, I propped the solar panel up last night and am anxious to see what tonight will bring. I will be entertaining guests, so that will really be a test.

I discovered that my solar panel is too weak. I am waiting for a new one to come in. The plan is to use an 18Watt panel. I had no idea how large my old one was. I have had it laying around collecting dust.

I have been using some LED lights in the evening to light my living room for now. They come as an expandable series of puck lights that normally hook up to a wall power supply. There are three pucks with 5 LEDs each. I cut the wires and hooked them up directly to my battery since they were 12 volts anyway. The puck lights work great to light up the room while watching tv.

When all the parts get here, I will post the sources of everything so that anyone who wants to copy this setup can do so.

I am still looking for a good priced solar panel for this experiment. The idea is to keep the price down, while supplying enough power to light up an average room comfortably.

Meanwhile, I am using my little old solar panel every night to run LED puck lights in my living room. They are sufficient for back lighting while watching tv or working on my computer. If you dont need the room to be bright as day while watching tv, these puck lights are perfect. And they dont drain the battery at all. You could literally run them for days without charging your battery. Good for Alaska maybe ;)

My new inverter arrived. I am looking for lower priced options for this project to try and keep the grand total within the price range of under $150.

I ordered a Belkin 50 watt inverter for only 9.95 plus shipping. Most places sell this item for much higher. Here is the link:

50 Watt Inverter

Cant wait to get testing.

I have discovered that prices have more than doubled in the last years on solar panels. I may have to modify my prices here. Years ago I was able to purchase solar panels for about $2 per watt. Now you are lucky to find them at $3-4 per watt. Most of them are around $5 per watt.

Therefore, I bought 50 solar cells from Ebay for only $99. I had to buy the flat connecting wire separately, bringing my total to $120 for about 87 watts of power at 12 volts. I am now in the very slow process of assembling my solar panels. I will make two panels in order to keep the size down a bit. The panels will be about 22 inches square each. Below is the picture of my cells.

This is the picture taken from Evergreens site on Ebay. Each cell measures 3x6 inches. The are extremely fragile and thin though, so this is taking a bit more time than I had originally planned. One cell puts out 0.5 volt at 3.5 Amps. This equals 1.75 Watt per cell. You need 36 cells to get 18 volts at 63 Watts. If you were to purchase the panel ready made, it would run you about $300 for this size.

Actually, for this test, I wanted to run 18 watts, which cost about $100 for a ready made panel.

More later...

I finally got some time on my hands and started soldering my new solar panels myself. I laid them out on a table to find the best configuration for the cells. I will have to make two panels, each with 18 cells in order to make up the correct voltage and wattage. I will take pictures later and upload them.

Anyway, I cut the wood and started soldering the tabs on the cells. Then I started to solder the cells together in series to add up the voltage. They are each 0.5 volts. 36 cells will make up 18 volts, which is the correct voltage for a solar panel to charge 12 volt lead acid batteries. I am making two panels of 18 cells instead of one large one so that they wont be too large. Each panel will be about 18 inches by 22 inches.

More details and pictures later.

I finally got all the materials together for my solar panel. Plexiglas at Home Depot was the most expensive single part, at $12 for a plate. I needed two of them. Also got some wood trim at only 98 cents a piece to use for the framing of the panel.

Plywood at Home Depot, precut is only about $5 each. I need two of everything because my panel will be too large otherwise. I will make two identical panels, each putting out 9 Volts.

In the above pictures, I got all my tools ready and started soldering - finally. I had to use a weight to hold the solar cell in place and another weight to hold the tabbing wire down while I soldered it into place.

Hopefully I will have this project finished soon.

Finally got my solar panel up and running. The toughest part was figuring out where to put it because my landlord will not allow me to put it anywhere visible. So, it is now in my sliding glass doors, facing the south side. It catches sun from about 8am to 5pm. It is not the most efficient setup, but it works well enough.

I have a $30 solar charge controller from ebay that can handle 15 amps of power. I am using a Belkin 50 watt inverter from eCost.com to convert the power to 120 volts. And there are 4 sealed lead acid batteries that I got for free, totaling about 40 amp hours together. I use a special radiant energy battery charger to restore old, discarded batteries to like new condition. See Radiant Charger for details.

The solar panels generate some energy to charge the batteries even on a dark, cloudy day. That was a surprise.

Right now my aquarium filter is running off the solar energy full time and I have enough reserve energy to run a 9 watt (60watt equivalent) energy efficient light bulb at night for hours. My netbook only needs 40 watts to power, so that runs nicely as well.

Testing my finished solar panels.

Above you can see my new solar panels putting out some nice power in the late afternoon winter sun. The volt meter reads 17.81 volts.

I also put an old 1.5 watt solar panel in my bedroom window to charge a small sealed lead acid battery during the day. At night it powers a 12 volt fluorescent lamp I got from Target for about $6. Free light for reading.

Today was very dark outside. Almost no natural light today. The solar panels did not really produce any energy at all. And I was home all day, using my netbook on solar. Had to use a light most of the time too.

The batteries are running at about 12.05 volts at 6:pm already. Not good. I may need to add more batteries in order to have more reserve energy for cloudy days.

I just moved to the country!

Now I can put my solar panels outside in the full sunlight and really begin testing. I had to have them in my sliding glass doors because my landlord would not allow me to put them outside anywhere.

Well, now I have an apartment on 1.5 acres of free, wild land in the mountains. When I get a warmer day, the panels are going outside in the full sun. I will set up sunlight tracking systems for maximum energy output during the daylight hours.

I was only getting some light directly on the panels during the mid day in my old place. This provided enough energy to power a couple energy efficient lights and my netbook in the evenings.

With solar tracking, I should get about 870 watt hours of energy during the ten hour long winter days and up to 1300 watts during the summer months.

I have an idea to increase the energy output even more. If you look up "Bedini Motor" or "SSG" on the internet, you will find a sort of "free" energy generator. It takes a small amount of energy to run it and puts out larger amounts of energy into batteries. I have been experimenting with this idea for a few years now and may try using solar energy to power the Bedini motor, which will charge batteries.

Above is a picture of a roller skate wheel generating electricity using the Bedini concept.

If you use solar energy and energy efficient lighting, cooking or heating, you may be qualified for tax and rebate incentives.

I will list anything here that may be helpful. Please feel free to contribute to this page.

Here is a link to the database of state incentives for renewables & efficiency:

http://www.dsireusa.org/

You may be able to purchase you solar items tax free and also get up to 30% of your investment offset by the government.