We all know that outfitting a house with solar panels is not cheap right now. Harnessing enough sun to be able to live completely off-grid costs many thousands of dollars, up to many tens of thousands depending on how much electricity is needed. But do we really need to go from 0% to 100% clean energy in one go? That’s not usually the way things are done; we usually do incremental changes. The idealist will say that it’s not fast enough (and might be right), but the realist will say that the mainstream has more chances of going for it if it’s not too radical and expensive, and that the power of numbers is hard to deny. So the question is: Do we really need to go 100% solar at once? What is the least you could pay and still end up with enough solar juice to run some things around the house? The Off-Grid weblog answers that question.
Partial Solar Solution
Update: How to Make Inexpensive DIY Home-Built Solar Panels with Damaged Solar Cells from eBay for $600, you could get yourself enough solar power each week (about 1KWh) to:
$600 Solar Kit
Here’s what the “$600 kit” consists of:
Most of these can probably be found online at some of the alternative energy stores we’ve covered in the past.
But the beauty is that once you’ve go the “starter” solar system, it is relatively easy to expand it as your needs or wallet grow.
This project is Do-It-Yourself only if you know what you are doing, and as usual when electricity is involved, a qualified electrician should approve your setup before you power it on.
