As a result of increasing costs of home electricity, more and more consumers are investigating the possibility of using alternative energy sources to supplement or replace their reliance on traditional electric companies.
According to the Energy Information Administration’s Official Energy Statistics from the US Government, the average cost of a residential kilowatt hour in 2008 was $0.1049. In 2009, prices have risen to an average of $0.1128 – a 7.5% increase.
Two alternative energy sources available to many homeowners
are solar and wind generated power.
However, the cost of a full home installation is still prohibitive due to the manufacturing costs of the photovoltaic cells needed to make solar panels. Those costs have slowly come down, but not yet sufficiently to make the payback of a full installation a value proposition for many homeowners.
One way to harness at least some of the sun’s energy in order to reduce your electric bills is to make your own solar panels and complete much of the installation process yourself. Several manuals are available online that walk through the step by step instructions for making your own solar panels. One such guide is called Earth4Energy, an ebook and video instruction package that covers a number of projects to help build your own solar panels and wind generator.
