Last spring (2009) I wrote my first article about building my own solar panels (just to be clear : for making electricity) . At the end of the day on December 31, 2009, I had finished installing my panels totalling about 400 Wp. So now its time for an update.
I could see that my electricity bill was increasing year after year, mostly because my modern day appliances can’t be turned off anymore. I noticed that I had many appliances in the house which are on standby day in and day out. This not only harms the environment, but also my bank account as I am using electricity for nothing. Unable to solve this problem (as this is how appliances are designed and I can’t change this), I started to look into renewable energy to compensate for my unneeded losses and to take some pain from my bank account.
Since January 2008, we are busy in our household trying to reduce our energy consumption. We succeeded in this task quite well. We reduced our gas consumption with 30% and our electricity consumption by a staggering 90%. Are you curious how we did this?
On April 29′th 2009, finally my solar panels are installed! 14 panels of 210 Wp (Watt Peak) each (Suntech STP210-18/Ub). In total 2940 Wp (Watt Peak). Not a small one. Especially if I tell you that my last year’s usage in electricity has been around 1600 kWh. That’s why I bought it also for the future. If I had an addition to the family, and an electric car! My choices: Hybrid plug-in, or pure electrical, depending on what models will be available. But I will write an article about that some other time. Now more about this installation…
As far as I know, this is the first existing home in the Netherlands, which is converted to a “zero energy” home. The electricity generated by solar panels and the heating is done by a heat pump, total net costs of subsidies: € 15,000.
Our sun, a nuclear fusion source which is already working reliably for more than 5 billion years, produces an extreme amount of energy. Within 6 hours, deserts on Earth receive more solar energy than we use in a whole year globally. Therefore it is strange that we are not already using this free energy source to it’s full potential. It looks like this is going to change now. A group of twenty big German corporations has plans to deliver solar power from Africa to German households in Europe within 10 years. The plan consists of investing 400 billion euros to build gigantic large Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) plants in North-Africa. With this investment, 15% of the total European electricity can be generated by solar power day and night. It is one of the biggest private green initiatives.
At the end of November 2008, I placed a solar energy system on my house. The PV system (Photo Voltaic System) has a power rating of 3500 Watt peak. In the last 3 months it has already generated 382 kWh.
Because I think that the price of a solar panel is still pretty high(in Europe), and because the stimulation from our government (in the Netherlands) is not so good (very,very complicated and time consuming) I started the project of building my own solar panel. I would like to invite anyone who has some experience with this or is interested in it ,to give me any advice or remarks about it. The main challenge is to build a panel that can withstand heat, cold, rain and hail for many years.
One year after using my first (small) set of solar panels, and many moments of measuring (weekly), the blue PV-virus took a grip on my life 
Combined with possibility (both financially as physically) to place more panels on the flat roof, the urge to use this space began to grow….
See and read here in this article where I upgrade a small-size (570Wp) installation toward a ’slightly’ larger one (1.710Wp).
After settling down in your own new house, with a new future and lots of new ideas, then it comes to mind: What’s next?
After a while it becomes clear: I want solar energy to be available for my house!! How things went after taking this decision, you can read it in this essay…
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