I hope this is the best area to ask this... I want to learn how to build my own small solar panels. I seem to recall running across a plan to do so in a magazine a few years ago, but cannot for the life of me remember where I read it. Does anyone know how to do this? I'm wanting to build something that, at the least, could possibly run a small water heater. I know that there are numerous products out there for ready made solar heaters, but I would rather make my own and save $$$$. Thanks!

The voltage/current from solar cells to power a water heater would be large, It may be better to heat the water with the sun(lot of copper tubing painted black)or other method on the roof will be more efficient, problem is by morning, it will have cooled.

First of all, solar panels are expensive because they have to be manufactured in a clean room. As soon as someone figures out how to make them under standard conditions, they'll be about a fourth as expensive. If you wanted to make your own solar panel for electrical generation, it would probably end up as more of a science experiment than anything else and would probably not put out much power.

However, if you want to use solar power to heat water, that is possible, and relatively easy. Solar heaters don't convert the sunlight to electricity then power the water boiler with it. The simplest one runs a series of black tubes on the roof that will absorb sunlight and heat the water which is then circulated through the boiler. That way, the boiler doesn't have to work as hard to heat the water to the same hot temperature it did before.

There are other systems that use something like a solar panel to accomplish the same thing. If you know anything about thermodynamics, it is called a heat exchanger. It works the same way as the radiator in an apartment does. I've found a lot of stuff on do it yourself solar water heaters through Google searches, you can probably find some more good information there. Good luck.

smokedetector:

Solar panels and/or solar cells DO NOT have to be manufactured in a clean room, but the process can be expensive. GE has a plant that I toured that manufactures solar cells from waste Integrated circuit material.

Crystaline silicon is so expensive because it has to be grown and that takes time, then it has to be cut which wastes material.

Doping can be done in an oven and the contacts are screen printed.

I've synthsized and grown other semiconductor materials and it's a long process. A few days to react the materials without an explosion and a week or so to grow the material. "Grow" is defined as solidify very very slowly, hopefully on a seed crystal. Then it has to be sliced with a diamond wire saw.