Florida Man Makes Solar Panels - Saves $$
Solar Panels How-to: a Success Story…
My friend Greg is a contractor. Recently he has been building a residence for a client who lives in Florida. This guy wanted solar panels on his house to collect the abundant Florida sunshine and turn it into household electricity.
Problem was, the fellow had a limited budget. Greg and I took a look at some factory-made photovoltaic panels, and sure did they look good — and sure did they cost plenty of cash!
Greg’s client said he couldn’t afford such solar panels, on top of all the other expenses for building materials (Actually, he is rather well off but he hates to part with money.)
OK, I suggested to Greg that maybe we take a look at letting the client assemble the solar panels himself, if he could handle it; and save $$ that way. Greg and his client both liked the idea.
Now, you should know that Greg’s client isn’t the handiest man in the world. He can change the oil of his car (saves him a couple of bucks), but I really wondered if he’d be able to make solar panels!
Well, we searched around on the Web for some easy-to-follow instruction manual on “how to build solar panels”. Turned out there were a couple of those. So we purchased a few that seemed promising and proceeded to take a good look at ‘em.
To be of use to Greg’s client, the manual had to be very clear and simple to follow. Plus the materials specified had to be really inexpensive.
I will make a long story short here. One of the manuals was just poorly written. Then there were some that were too complicated and hard to follow for a person with rather average tech skills.
Finally, one manual on do-it-yourself solar panels really stood out above the rest. Not only did it have good written instructions but there were also videos you could watch. For some people, learning by watching works better than learning by reading.
Everything was laid out nice and clear, and with some minimum amount of help from us Greg’s client was able to make his first solar panel in one weekend. We all celebrated! After that, he could easily make a couple of more panels in no time flat.
And before I forget: I was amazed at how cheap the materials were. Actually, the whole thing came out to maybe $200 per panel.
Greg’s client was pleased. Not only had he saved thousands of dollars (which felt really good) — but he also had somehow developed a better self-confidence. Right now he is happily working on some kind of wind turbine. You see, plans for making your own wind generator were included with the instruction manuals — and now the guy just cannot resist trying his hands on making one of those gizmos!
In case you’re interested… here is the place where we found the “WINNER”…
