Need Info and Links to build Solar Collectors

[erichtopp]

I am looking for information and links for a homebuilt solar hot water project. I am also looking for information and links to build a solar photovoltaic array.

Problem # 1:  Our price of natural gas here just went up 64 percent last month and my water heater and furnace are presently powered by natural gas. So I would like to start by a adding solar hot water heating system to my present hot water heater to offset some of the hot water heating costs. Even if I can offset 40 percent of my hot water costs, I would be happy with that. Problem is, there isn't a lot of information on the web about building homemade hot water solar panels. To buy commercial panels is a fortune. I figure I will likely need a closed loop system as I live in Canada where temperatures drop well below freeezing. What information is available on this site or any others showing how to build the collectors in a close loop system?

Problem # 2: As posted elsewhere on this website, we are going with smart metering (the prices I gave are apparently too low according to local utility who I have just spoken to).  Anyway, I searched homebuilt solar cells on the web as I am interested in building homebuilt photovoltaic solar cells. The commercial ones are just too expensive to buy for the power they produce, making the payback time far too long. All I could find when I searched were some pictures directing me back to the Otherpower.com but I couldn't find the article. Can anyone point me to the article or articles on this website or others for making your own photovoltaic solar cell arrays???

Thankyou all for your past help on many of my questions. As a result of your excellent comments, I have been able to collect a tremendous amount of valuable information. Rgds, Erich  P.S. Keep those wind gennys spinning.

[phil b]

http://www.builditsolar.com/

[wildbill hickup]

I'm with phil

[Bruce S]

There is also a very good website mothereartnews.com that has tons of ideas and plans. just put solar water heater in the upper right search.

Bruce S

[thedan]

I have been looking all over the web on and off for about two months now on solar heating.  Apparently the best way is to use alot of mirrors to focus solar energy on a single point.  (google "solar tower")  You can get alot of ideas from how the major generators work because most of the tech can be scaled down rather nicely.

If you don't want your pipes to have any outdoor exposure, you can use the same technique and just put (an efficient) 2x2 solar cell as the reciever (where the mirrors point).

If you want something uber-cheap, you can use aluminum foil (like from grocery stores) and get about 65% the efficiency of glass.  They say pure aluminum has about the same efficiency as glass and is more robust.

To give you an idea of the power output:  "solar ovens/stoves" can make 400w using about 4 sq meters of "mirror".  

Good luck.

[elvin1949]

 try this

www.redrock.com

elvin

[Frank06]

I can recommend a book by Richard Komp ("Practical Photovoltaics") that talks about hybrid collectors.  I built one using his plans and use it to preheat domestic hot water.

When you think about it, most PV's are only 15% efficient at best and the rest is lost in heat.  A hybrid collector collects this heat; make a paradigm shift - it's really a water heater that happens to generate a bit of electricity.

The other thing that works well if you have batteries, is to use excess energy from PV's or wind genny to heat water via diversion controls/DC water heating elements.