Solar panels aren’t cheap – they cost thousands of pounds to install. However these costs are said to be offset by the reduced amount of energy that the household will require once they are installed – with some companies claiming that solar panels will reduce gas and electric bills by up to 70%. So although the up front cost is high, over time the solar panels should pay for themselves thanks to significantly reduced bills.

Around 100,000 households in the UK are said to have solar thermal installations already. Experts believe that this figure could rise to around 1 million over the next decade. This massive increase will in part be fueled by government grants which come into play next year. And with people worried about climate change and the rising cost of bills, there will be no shortage of people looking to install this expensive green technology.

However all is not as it seems. Which? has found that out of 14 companies they looked at, 10 exaggerated the claims about the effectiveness and potential savings of their solar panel systems. They found that a typical system costs around £5,500 to install however it will only cut around £55/year from bills. This means it would take around 100 years to recoup the up-front cost. Complaints to the OFT match Which?’s findings with around 1,000 complaints about the solar panel industry last year alone.

So although solar panels do have bona fide green credentials, it appears that many companies are overplaying how efficient the panels will be. Any for anyone who is hoping to save money on their bills by installing them, it is a case of do your homework carefully as in many cases homeowners are finding that the figures are not stacking up.

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Milan Karki, 18, comes from a rural village in Nepal. The young inventor uses hair as a conductor in solar panels instead of silicon, one of the normal components used in solar panels. Silicon is very pricey whereas hair is not therefore the new solar panels are a lot more cost effective.

Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world. Many rural areas in the country lack any electrical supply and even in areas with electricity, there may be shortages of up to 16 hours a day.

Milan and four classmates have already made a prototype of the new solar panel. It produces around 9V (18W) of energy and costs around $50 to make.

It is believed that if the new hair solar panels were mass produced, the costs would halve and this would make them around a quarter of the price of solar panels currently for sale. The solar panel is currently capable of charging a mobile phone or a pack of batteries capable of providing light all evening.

Melanin, the pigment in hair that gives it it’s colour, is light sensitive and can also act as an electrical conductor. A kilo of hair can be bought in Nepal for about $1.

Milan says his inspiration comes from British scientist Stephen Hawking who described how to create static energy from hair in one of his books.

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The premise behind the invention is that there are different forms of light around the world – at the equator, the sun may be burning hot however at higher latitudes, the sunlight is a lot weaker. Partly this is because the atmosphere acts as a light filter so the light reaching the ground will vary from place to place, and will also vary according to different atmospheric conditions.

Quantasol is now using a solar cell which makes of use of gallium arsenide (GaAs) rather than silicon which most other solar cells use. GaAs solar cells have already been used in space successfully.

Quantasol take their solar cells and add indium gallium arsenide (InGaAs) to tiny pores across the surface of the solar panel. Each of these pores can be tuned so that they absorb light at particular frequencies that aren’t being absorbed well by the rest of the GaAs cell. This means that the efficiency of the solar panel should increase because the InGaAs pores are able to absorb more of the light in the particular area.

In tests, Quantasol’s new solar cells have broken as 21 year old efficiency record for one type of solar cell. The peak efficiency was measures at 28.3 percent when light 500 times the strength of standard sunlight was shone at the solar panel. Although the result is just one-tenth of a percent higher than the previous record holder, the record has stood for a massive 21 years so it represents a good step forward in solar cell technology.

The main problem of using GaAs in cells instead of silicon is the cost – silicon is a much cheaper material. However Quantasol’s solar cells don’t become overloaded as quickly as silicon solar cells therefore smaller, more efficient cells can be built using Quantasol’s technology.

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Photovoltaic cells are what most people think of when solar power is talked about. Photovoltaic cells are the most popular form of solar power and there are plenty of these types of cells available for residential use.

Howvever BrightSource Energy will be using solar-thermal technology for their energy plant. Solar-thermal energy uses sunlight to produce heat. The heat produces steam which then drives a turbine which generates electricity. A photovoltaic cell, in contrast, generates electricity directly from the Sun’s rays.

Solar-thermal power stations can be built to a large scale far more easily than a solar-photovoltaic power station, and are usually far cheaper to build. As the heat can also be stored, the energy output of a solar-thermal power plant is not as erratic as that of a solar-photovoltaic energy plant. It is also possible to easily fit natural-gas boilers into solar-thermal power plants to ensure that they produce regular supplies of energy, even if gas is not a renewable form of energy.

The one major stipulation for a solar thermal power plant is that it should be built in an area which has a lot of uninterrupted sunshine to ensure that the plant is efficient and produces a good, regular supply of energy. At present, there is only around 500 megawatts of capacity in solar thermal plants at the moment, however with plenty of companies interested in the technology, this capacity is set to increase dramatically in the next few years.

Solar thermal power is not a new idea – in fact, it has it’s roots in China and ancient Greece where the sun’s rays were often focused with mirrors or glass to light fires. A similar technique has also been used to set enemy boats on fire.

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Firstly, you should look for some damaged solar cells. eBay is a good first port of call for cheap, blemished solar panels. Solar cells tend to be about as thin as paper and are incredibly brittle and fragile therefore handle them with great care!

You now need to build a frame for your home made solar cells. You can build this from MDF, peg-board or any other cheap wood you have lying around. You basically just need to create a ‘picture frame’ for the solar cells however ensure that the edges which hold the cells in lie approximately at the same height as the solar cell itself otherwise the edges will cast a shadow and therefore make your DIY solar panel less effective.

Lay the cells out upside-down so that you can solder them together. We suggest you will need around 18 – 32 cells, however it depends how big you want your solar panel to be and also how many cells you can get your hands on in the first place! The solar panels should be soldered together in series. If you have multiple panels, they will also need to be connected in series. As mentioned above, the solar cells are incredibly fragile so use a really light touch when soldering them together. If you push too hard on them, you will break them.

Each solar panel in your system will need a blocking diode in series to stop the solar panel from discharging your batteries at night or when it is an overcast day, so add a polarizing two-pin jones plug to the end of each of the solar panel’s wires.

And there you have it – your own, home-made solar panel!

Not convinced this is the project for you? View our solar panels for sale.
Read about the Chinese inventor and his beer bottle solar panel.
Plus read all about solar cell paint.

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