DIY Solar Energy - Reduce Home Electricity Bill With Solar Power

How do we use a Do It Yourself (DIY) home solar energy system to reduce our electricity bill? One of the major expenses of our homes is the electricity bill. We use electricity to power all our household appliances. Most electric power plants use either oil or coal to generate power. We know the supply of this material is limited therefore as housing development grows, the cost of electric power will increase as well. How do we shield ourselves from future rising cost of electricity? One option is to use a renewable energy source such as solar power.

The current challenge of using solar energy to power our homes is the high cost. If you were to engage a contractor to do the retrofitting, be prepared to invest a few thousand dollars. Many people would not be able to afford that. As an alternative, we can build our own homemade solar energy system via a DIY approach.

The idea of extracting the power from the sun ray is quite simple. We need to install an array of solar cells on the roof to collect the energy from the sun and convert it into electric power. The power from the sun is stored in rechargeable deep cycle batteries. Since most or our home electric components use AC current, we need an AC converter to change the DC power from the batteries into alternate current.

To reduce our household electricity bill is a matter of connecting our home appliances into the solar power system. The amount of power we can use from the system will depend on the size of the solar panels and also the number of batteries. If we were to aim for 10 percent energy cost reduction, the amount of money saved will be quite substantial after a few years.

Autor: Ken J. Maxwell

Want to know how you can build your own Home Solar Panels to reduce your electricity bill for under $300? If you are good with hand tools, start a Do It Yourself (DIY) project to construct a residential solar array to harness free energy from the sun. What you will need is a step by step instructional guide. Get a comprehensive Solar Power For Homes guide review at http://www.DIYSolarHomes.com

Added: January 22, 2009
Source: http://ezinearticles.com/