Best Overall DIY Solar Energy Guide – Earth4Energy Average User Rating:  I strongly recommend that you check out the Earth4Energy Guide. The best thing about this guide is that it makes every step of the process so simple. I was able to follow it through from start to finish with basic tools and very little DIY knowhow. If you can follow simple instructions then you can have your own solar powered home in a matter of weeks. It really is the best DIY solar guide on the market. Click here to go check it out now!

These other guides are also VERY good and worth checking out. I've looked at more than 10 DIY Solar Energy Guides and these are by far the best ones:

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Is Earth4Energy for Real?

With the rise in popularity of alternative energy sources has come a huge explosion of services and products catering to this nascent market. Unfortunately, we all know that whenever there is money being spent freely there will be unscrupulous product creators looking to cash in on the newest craze without contributing any value to the communities they supposedly serve. This can make it hard to trust any new product.

One product to come out in recent years that seems to promise some amazing things for the alternative energy field is called Earth4Energy.

 >>Click here to get your copy of Earth4Energy now<<

Should I Trust Earth4Energy?

To put it succinctly- yes, you should trust this product and hopefully you'll understand why after reading our Earth4Energy review. While the claims that it makes might seem to be too good to be true, there is nothing that it promises which isn’t very real. It’s main claim is that it teaches you how to apply a Do It Yourself ethic to alternative energy, and that it will teach you how to develop and install a solar and wind power system yourself at an extremely low cost, which will eliminate at least half of your energy bill.

There is nothing about these claims which are outlandish or impossible. A lot of the costs of solar and wind energy result from large companies doing what large companies do best- raising prices well above where they need to be set for the sake of profits. Are solar panels and home wind turbines specialized technology? Certainly, but in this day and age we all know that technology can be had for cheaper without compromising quality, by skipping the brand names.

Earth4Energy is Designed for Homes

The main point I want to make in my Earth4Energy review is that the system is NOT the result of a large company conducting market testing and focus groups, nor was it developed for offices and then re-designed for individual home owners.

The program was actually designed by an individual named Mark Weinsierl who went through a lot of what you’re likely going through right now. He was a homeowner who wanted to do good for the environment and to convert as much of his energy needs to renewable clean energy sources as possible. Yet he was unable to pay the huge fees that most people are forced to shell out for massive installations of solar and wind power systems for their home. He tried out a lot of the low cost alternatives, and was disappointed by the lackluster results that they all produced.

Instead of giving up, Mark just keep exploring further and further, trying more and more tips and tactics out until he found a system that worked really well for the needs of his house. And that system is the basis of the Earth4Energy program. Essentially, in the program Mark shows you exactly what he did to produce a huge amount of free renewable energy for a fraction of the price you would pay one of the big companies.

Solarhub User Feedback

"Hi Joe, I just wanted to send a quick word of thanks for your review of the Earth4Energy product. It gave me the confidence to buy it and I'm absolutely delighted. I was very cautious as I had bought another guide already which was impossible to follow, but Earth4Energy is like having a contractor looking over your shoulder every step of the way. I finished my installation about 4 weeks ago, and just called the power company to close my account. Its so liberating knowing I'll never have to pay another electricity bill, or nag the kids to turn off the TV when they're not watching it!"

                                     Benjamin, Toledo -Ohio.

 >>Click here to get your copy of Earth4Energy now<<

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Checking Out Green DIY Energy

While many of us want to do our part to help out the environment by switching to “greener” alternative energy sources, most of us aren’t able to shell out the tens of thousands of dollars those energy systems entail. Even though those systems are great investments that pay for themselves over time, you still need that initial capital to turn them into a reality. And that’s just beyond the means of most people.

Thankfully, there are some very enterprising people who have figured out how to apply the Do It Yourself ethic to building alternative sources of energy. These people have figured out ways to create fully functional, highly effective alternative energy systems for pennies on the dollar of what you would pay for a traditional large scale system.

We’re going to let you know about one of these options in our GreenDIYenergy review.

>>Click here to get your copy of GreenDIYEnergy<<

What You’ll Learn

The GreenDIYenergy system has a lot to offer most homeowners. Essentially, they break down what you need to do to create your own solar energy system. Their guide is a true step-by-step system that’s aimed at normal people, so you don’t need to worry about having a science degree or being an experienced craftsman to get everything you need and want out of this program. After all that’s the DIY ethic right there- breaking seemingly complicated material down so literally ANYONE can replicate it.

GreenDIYenergy actually teaches you how to build a solar panel for (at most) a fifth of the price of a solar panel on the market. If you decide to do a little digging and really master the directions they provide in their guide, you’ll be able to construct a solar panel for practically one fiftieth of the cost of an equivalent panel on the open market.

Furthermore, the system will teach you precisely how to install your solar panels yourself. Anyone who has looked into acquiring a functioning solar system for their home understands that installation can easily become just as costly as all the panels themselves. By learning how to bypass high-priced contractors, you will save yourself a fortune before you even see your first lowered energy bill.

How You’ll Learn

One of the best things we found when carrying out our GreenDIYenergy review was the fact that you will receive both written instructions as well as video of everything you’re required to do to make this system work for you. Like I mentioned before, it’s my firm belief that anyone can follow this program and produce their own functional solar panels. Between the written step-by-step instructions and the video series (not to mention the program’s many happy clients and glowing testimonials) I am convinced that this program is truly accessible to everyone.

It’s also incredibly cheap. The amount of money you will save on just your first home-made solar panel will be many times the price of this program. If you are at all interested in solar power but have been put off by the cost of the big name companies, than go ahead and get GreenDIYenergy and see just how simple it is to create a totally environmentally friendly and low costs energy system for your home.  Hopefully my GreenDIYenergy review will help you to make the choice if you’re wondering which DIY solar installation to go for.

>>Click here to get your copy of GreenDIYEnergy<<

When you’re installing your own solar power system, you’re going to need to know something about solar power design. That means you need to understand how much electricity you have to generate to power the load in question. This will give you an initial idea of the cost and viability of what you’re trying to do.

Lets say for instance you were out in a rural shack in Arizona in Summer and wanted to power a 1000 W air conditioner to keep cool. When dealing with solar power design, you always want to go with the ‘worst case scenario'. So let’s imagine that we need our air conditioner on 24 hours a day. 

How much energy do we need per 24 hours then? It’s reasonably easy to calculate. 1000W x 24 hours = 24kWh. Let’s give ourselves some leeway and put in an extra ~25% to account for losses of power in the cables and general inefficiency considerations. This brings us to 30kWh. 

>>Click here for a great solar power design guide<<

Next we need to figure out how much sun we’re going to get. This is known as insolation. In the Arizona region we get an average insolation of 7 kWh/m2/day in Summer (You can find details of these calculations on the web).

Now for our solar power design, we need to calculate how big a solar panel array we’re going to need to generate the necessary power. We need 30 kWh/day and a 1m² solar panel might give us about 100 W peak power. In that case we would need 30 m² of solar panels. However, Arizona only gets the equivalent of about 7 hours of peak power per day, so we need to multiply by just over 4 to be guaranteed our required 30 kWh per day, meaning 120 m². Quite a lot indeed, but this is a rather extreme case of needing a large amount of consistent power all day and night.

We need to store the vast majority of this energy for use in the hours of darkness. For this we need to know what sort of battery set up we need. We don’t want our batteries to go into deep discharge as you’ll know if you’ve ever left your car lights on for a long time; the battery is never the same afterwards. So we want to be reasonably kind to our batter array and only discharge it by say ¼ if possible. This consequently means that the battery should be able to hold 4 times what our heater will be drawing.

We showed earlier that we’ll be drawing perhaps 24 kWh/day after losses. We need this to be only ¼ of our battery’s capacity so let’s say we need a battery capable of delivering 100 kWh/day for our particular solar power design.

Now we need to convert from energy language to battery language. Batteries are normally rated in amp-hours so to convert back to Amps from Watts we need to know the voltage of our system. Let’s say we’re using a 24 V system. Our load is 100,000 Watt hours, so we divide by the voltage to get about 4200 Amp hours. Consider that an average car battery is about 50 Amp hours and you’ll see how big a battery you need to be ensured of being nice and cool in your cabin!

 In this article we just wanted to show you the basic considerations and a back of the envelope calculation for a solar power design. There are much more detailed instructions on how to plan for your needs in the solar guide in the link below. Have a look at our page on solar savings to find out how much you can expect to save

>>Click here for a great solar power design guide<<

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Chances are you’re interested in solar power for a lot of good reasons- becoming energy independent, using an energy source that is more environmentally friendly, etc.

But at the end of the day, it’s an unfortunate fact that most of us have to make the decision about whether we are going to start using solar power for ou

r houses based on how much it will all cost us. While solar power systems are a true investment, their upfront costs can sometimes make even the most ardent supporter of the planet shy away. However, things can be much more affordable if you adopt a DIY approach for some or all of the work.

>>Learn how to keep solar costs low with this great guide<<

Solar Electricity Systems

Most people who are interested in solar power are primarily concerned with creating full solar energy systems to provide electricity for their houses. The cost of your solar energy system will depend greatly upon the complexity of the system and how much electricity you require it produces. Naturally, the amount of electricity you require for your house will depend greatly upon how energy efficient your house is. Have a look at our solar power design  and solar savings pages to find out more about calculating your requirements.

On the upper end of the spectrum, a house that is not energy efficient and which utilizes conventional appliances and electrical systems will require a solar system that will cost around $40,000 to purchase the needed panels to have those panels installed. For reference, energy efficient houses are likely to only require half of that at most. If you are simply looking for a supplemental energy producing system, than you can get by paying around $10,000 total.

These figures are based on paying a contractor and buying complete solar panels. If you feel a little adventurous you can take on part, or all of the job yourself. For example, a 100 W solar panel purchased at a speciality store will probably cost you upwards of $300. If you buy your own solar cells and invest a little bit of time, you could build a panel for 1/4 of this. That means a saving of upwards of $5,000 on a 2 kW system. Even if you hire a professional to do this installation, thats quite a saving on the materials! A complete step-by-step guide to go about building a panel is available by clicking the link at the bottom of the page.

Solar Heating System

Solar heating systems are the second most popular and prevalent use of solar energy in most households, though they tend to actually be more expensive than solar electrical systems. Still, due to increasing fuel prices that are likely to continue to rise well into the future, solar heating systems often make back their increased price tag just as quickly as solar electrical systems.

The cost of a solar heating system can vary massively depending on your requirements. They can cost as low as thirty thousand dollars, and can also run over one hundred thousand dollars. The biggest considerations are the size of your home and the complexity of the system that you require.

It’s also important to remember that solar heating systems never meet a home’s total heating needs, due to both limitations of the technology as well as building code regulations.

Making it All Back

Remember what I said at the beginning of this article- the solar power cost you pay is an investment. When factoring in the savings that are given to your through tax credits and incentives, and when taking into consideration the cost savings on heating and electrical costs, most solar power systems pay themselves back well before the end of their lifetimes. The most efficient and effective solar systems can even pay themselves back within just a few years, though this number will vary greatly depending on the cost of your system and the precise savings that it provides. Simply remember that while the above prices may seem excessively high, like all good investments it will pay off in time, and a lot of the initial cost can be offset by doing some of the work yourself.

>>Learn how to keep solar costs low with this great guide<<

The value of your solar panel installation really depends on how much you are paying for your electricity at the moment and how much the price of electricity from conventional sources is going to increase into the future. Thesecond consideration is how much the power companies will pay you for the electricity you generate and give back to them. If your electricity company offers 'Net Metering', where they will give you the full retail price for your excess electricity then you and the electricity company will pay the same for each other's supply. Let's say you really go for it and install a 10kW solar panel array on your roof. We multiply that by the 'energy production factor' from the map below (courtesy of the Dept. of Energy).

If you're in San Diego that gives you a total production of 10 kW x 2000 kWh/kW -year for a total of 20,000 kWh over the course of the year. That's the unit the electricity company measures in, and charges about 10 cents for. You can see pretty easily that with this kind of installation you would save $2000 over the course of a year!

Even if your family doesn't use this much electricity, it doesn't go to waste and will actually earn you money from the power company. This is a great way to go if you've got the money and what's more, you can even do it yourself these days. There are great guides online that will take you through every step.

>>Click here for a comprehensive DIY solar guide<<

If your electricity company doesn't offer net metering or doesn't offer a service where you can sell electricity back to them, then you need to think about things a little more carefully. In that case you should plan your system to produce precisely the amount of power you will need, plus some contingency, as anything that you produce over and above this will be wasted energy. This will impact on your solar savings as you will have needlessly over-spent on extra materials when starting your project.

Installation Cost

Obviously the installation cost of your system will vary widely, based upon your needs. Our solar power design page can teach you a little bit more about that. The single biggest factor in determining the initial costs is the size of the system that you want to install and whether you want to adopt a DIY approach or here a professional. For example, a single 100 W solar panel professionally installed will costs you up to $1000! If you want to get a 5 kW system which will provide all the electricity you need you're looking at an installation cost of between $30,000 and $40,000. If however you decide to go down the DIY route, you'll find that you can install your system for a fraction of this, making the overall lifetime solar savings for your property much higher. If you're on the fence about getting your system professionally installed or hiring a contractor, we strongly recommend you check out the guide below, as in the first instance it will be and invaluable too if you decide to go the DIY route and it will ensure that you are up to speed and won't be ripped off if you hire a professional to do the job for you.

>>Click here to get the comprehensive DIY solar guide now<<

More people than ever these days are interested in solar energy, but not everyone wants to go out and hire a company to install their panels for themselves. Many people these days are interested in solar energy projects that they can do themselves, whether to save on costs or to go along with the independent, off grid power ideology that so many solar energy enthusiasts live by, or simply to have fun with a cool science project!

Low Maintenance Solar Home Projects

When most people think about solar panels, they assume that they are all projects that use solar panels to provide energy for a device or a power grid. This actually isn’t always the case, as there are plenty of solar projects that have nothing to do with PV panels.

For example, if you are building a home or adding an addition to your house, you should look into considering a passive “sun room.” A sun room is a room that’s designed from the ground up to maximize the heat, light and energy of the sun’s rays to ensure you don’t need to use artificial sources for any of those resources. In fact, it’s possible to build an entire house that is fully optimized to utilize the sun’s rays to drastically reduce energy expenditure.

These solar home design projects take into account the arc of the sun across the sky in ways that most modern architects never even think of. But designing homes to optimize their use of solar energy is nothing new- many indigenous and traditional cultures have been doing this for years to provide light during the day and to minimize heat loss at night!

Solar Panel Projects

Of course, there are also plenty of solar projects you can undertake which use solar panels in inventive ways. Most people are aware of attaching solar panels to the roof of your house to provide energy throughout the day, but most people don’t realize just how flexible home solar panels can be.

More and more people are using solar panels to heat up hot water tanks, to provide energy for laptops and cell phones while they are out and about, and some people are even attaching them to the roof of their cars and campers to provide all the energy they need when they hit the open road. Retrofitting older vehicles and devices for solar energy is not particularly difficult, and can make a fun project for an afternoon or weekend.

Cooking Projects with Solar Energy

Believe it or not, there are plenty of people out there who are cooking with solar energy. I’m not talking about individuals who simply heat their standard electric ovens with solar energy, but people who use solar cookers to make their meals!

What is a solar cooker exactly? It’s a device that’s arranges a series of reflective panels to amplify the heat of the sun’s rays and then to aim them directly at whatever device they’re going to heat and cook their food within.

Most solar cookers are really cheap and easy to make with a little ingenuity- or with the right plan.

There are plenty of weekend projects out there that are fun and interesting and will teach you and your family a lot about the science and technology of solar energy.

>>Click here to get your solar energy project guide<<

Can You Benefit from Solar Tax Credits?

Solar energy has taken a long time to catch on, both among the general public and among politicians. While the technology has been around for over a hundred years, and while the technology has been feasible for individual consumers for decades, it has only begun to reach widespread acceptance over the last 5 to 10 years. Part of this is due to changing attitudes among the public, but part of this is also due to politicians finally beginning to incentivize the technology with solar tax credits and the like.

Making Solar Panels Affordable

While the electricity produced by solar panels is free, buying the panels themselves are not particularly cheap and never have been. They are precisely manufactured utilizing high-end equipment, materials and manufacturing spaces- all of which are costly. While the technology and the process of producing the solar cells and panels that produce solar energy have continued to increase in efficiency and availability, the price of enough solar panels to power a house is higher than most could afford.

>>Click here for a guide to reducing solar costs<<

Rising demand and increasing manufacturing efficiency have not been enough to start to reach critical mass with the technology, which is why politicians over the last few years have begun to create incentives for individuals to purchase their own solar panels with solar tax credits. Combined with the other factors creating lowered costs, solar tax credits are a big reason why solar panels are affordable for individuals and businesses these days. You can find out more about the savings from solar power here.

What are Solar Tax Credits?

Solar tax credits cover a variety of solar energy systems, as they provide incentives for both solar water heaters and for solar panels (home PV systems). The actual nature of the tax credit and what you can expect to save varies depending on what you aim to construct for your home.

For a solar water heater to qualify for the tax credit, your heater only needs to produce over 50% of its energy from solar sources. It has to pass Solar Rating certification and it only applies to water that is heated for your home itself. So while there are solar energy systems for heating swimming pools, hot tubs and the like, these solar tax credits only apply to hot water tanks for internal residential use. The tax credits given will factor in both materials and installation costs.

Solar panel systems for your home also receive significant tax credits. Similar to the strictures for the solar water heaters, tax credits will only be given for electricity which is generated for use within your home, and it must pass all certifications and codes set up by the relevant national and state organizations.

Overall, the best way to determine whether the solar energy project you have in mind meets the criteria necessary to receive solar tax credits is to read and fill out the application forms relevant to your projects. As a whole, these tax credits are certainly worth pursuing as they provide a credit that reaches up to 30% of associated costs with no maximum as to how much you are able to be credited. This makes projects like Earth4Energy and GreenDIYenergy all the more attractive.

More information can be found on the Energy Star website. 

  Must Know Information on Home Solar Panels

Home solar panels are a hot topic for many people these days. Every year more people opt to install solar panels onto the roof of their homes (among other places) and more people than ever are curious about getting involved with this growing movement towards cheap and free renewable energy. Many people are inspired by the ideology of providing clean energy that is environmentally friendly and off the grid, while others are simply interested in the significant cost savings that renewable free energy     can provide for them.

A Primer on Solar Energy 

To explain it very quickly, solar energy is electricity produced when the sun’s rays strike what are known as Photovoltaic     panels; which are more commonly known as photo-voltaic (PV) panels or solar panels. Each of these panels is composed of a number of attached solar cells, which themselves are created from solar reactive materials (general crystalline silicon). When the sun’s rays hit these cells their reactions are converted into electricity, which travels as an electric current through the panels and down into either a power grid or a large-scale battery.

The key to solar energy lies in solar panels, which are the most visible component of the process as they are traditionally installed on the roof of residential properties.

Professional Solar Panel Installation

In an ideal world, you would like to install your solar panels when your home is already being re-roofed. This way you can prepare your roof best in terms of locating rafters to anchor the panels to, and to ensure that the panels are installed in such a manner that they do not result in a leaky roof.  As you can imagine though, taking on all this cost at once is not ideal.

Most people find that although it may be simple to have certified home solar panel professionals take care of installation for them, it’s just too expensive. Even with the fact that solar tax credits tend to relate to both the cost of the panels themselves and to the cost of their installation, the final cost is often prohibitive for a lot of people wishing to enter the solar energy domain.

So, while the electricity produced by solar panels is completely free, and while solar panels require minimal maintenance and upkeep after they are installed, the process of purchasing and installing panels is not cheap. Before taking into account tax credits and other incentives to switch over to solar energy, panels and installations for a complex full home solar panel system is known to cost in the tens of thousands of dollars.

While this sounds exorbitant, it’s important to keep in mind the fact that solar panels and solar energy installations are an investment. When you factor in tax credits, incentives, and the money you save over the life of the panels it is common for a full system to more than pay for itself over its lifespan.

Is There Any Alternative?

 If the installation costs still scare you, there is still hope. There are a number of guides available on the internet which take you through the entire process,meaning that someone with basic tools and only the very slightest of DIY knowhow can fully kit out their home with a solar installation for just a fraction of the cost that they would pay to a contractor.

The best of these guides is called Earth4Energy. Their guide has an amazing amount of clear information packed into it and great technical support and back-up service.

>>Click here to visit earth4energy and get their guide<<

Below is a short piece on how solar panels are made

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYeynLy6pj8

Initial Steps

Firstly, you need to buy yourself some solar cells. Building a solar panel that outputs about 18V is a good first project. This will require 36 standard solar cells each of which will normally output around 0.5V and a maximum current of 3.5A. Make sure the cells you buy are not broken or fragmented. When you have all of your solar cells, you’ll need to mount them in a mounting box and connect them all together so that you get the maximum voltage out of your solar panel. You’ll need to make your own mounting box usually from wood cut to appropriate dimensions for your solar panel. Make sure to test all of the cells with a multimeter so that you can check that they are all outputting the correct voltage (usually ~0.5V)

Next Steps

Each cell will have a series of small lines and two big lines, with some spot-like connections on the back of the cell. What you need to do is attach the front of one cell, to the back of the next using tabbing wire and a soldering iron. After doing this a few times, you should have a ladder of solar cells, joined front to back by the tabbing wire. You can join one ladder of cells to another in a similar manner to give you a rectangular array of perhaps 4 x 9 cells to fit into your mounting box. You’re now well on your way to building your own solar panel.

When your cells are mounted and affixed to your mounting box (silicone is a good way to affix the cells), you need to go about making your solar panel water-tight. The first thing to do is put a sheet of plexiglass as a ‘lid’ for your mounting box, and make it water tight. Before your solar panel is completely encased, make sure you remember to drill a hole in the back of the box, so that you can connect your ‘load’ to the solar cells using the remaining two wires from your solar cell array. Don’t forget to make this hole watertight as well. Its very important that the cells don’t get contaminated with water or other substances. You’re array will now be outputting approximately 100W at a voltage of 18V. This could be used to charge a battery or run a DC device requiring this electrical output. If you would like to power an AC appliance, you would need an inverter which converts the stored DC power in the battery right into the AC power normally used by household appliances. Cheap inverters of various sizes can be purchased online too.

We've only outlined the basics in this article. For a fantastic step-by-step guide to the complete solar installation process we highly recommend you follow the earth4energy program.

Click here to visit earth4energy and get their guide