Home Made Energy <—where I purchased my guide from
Last year was a big push for us with solar panels. And as a part of my research I tried a whole bunch of those guides you can purchase around the Internet. You know all those websites giving their top 3 list of guides?
Well, I tried all those, there were not many, the thousands of websites out there touted the same three guides do be had. Now I had favorites folders filled with information from here, information from there and was maintaining a document so that I could put them together from all the free resources on the Internet. It took the better part of a year to gather and find all the information needed.
I really didn’t understand all the many systems that have to come together in order to make a solar system work. The panels, the PV cells themselves, how to make the frames, the mounting systems (there are many out there and they depend on your roof or ground if doing a pole mount system) invertors, software that ties them all together, monitors, batteries (wow are there lots of ways to do batteries) and the list goes on and on. Half way through the year I got frustrated and decided, that was just too much work. I wanted a guide that had all the information in one place.
So I purchased a guide, sadly I can’t recommend it to you. Why? Because that guide wasn’t complete, while it showed you portions of how to do each part of the system, it left out the key components. Like it talked about building a battery bank, but not the housing of the battery bank which is a key part. How to chain the PV cells together, but not how to build the enclosed frame for it, which again is the key part. Talked about the inverters and everything else, but had no suggestions or even a GUIDE on how to tie them all together. Worst part was, darn near every video in his “guide” was from You Tube and free of charge. That was a total waste of time and money.
So I hunted and searched for more professional websites looking for what it was I needed and purchased yet another guide. Well, sadly it was the same thing. I ended up purchasing books and doing more research. After all of this, we decided we wanted to move and set up a farm. So I gave up on a solar system here at the house because I would never get my investment back in the next few years when we move. So the whole solar system thing was put onto the back burner.
As the summer season hit us this year, we took an early camping trip in our camp trailer. It isn’t anything fancy, just a pop up trailer which weights next to nothing and is easily pulled behind the SUV. I had reserved a full service camp spot for our tent trailer and we left home expecting a really nice weekend trip.
When we arrived at the camp ground, we were not given a full service camp spot “Those are reserved for the real R.V.s” the manager and owner told me. Mortified, I had not packed for pocket baths. I mean we hauled our trailer all the way up there expecting to have full hook ups. All we had in the end was water hookup. With no electricity, the refrigerator, lights, water heater or pump on the shower would not work.
We spent the weekend in our glorified tent, took showers in the public shower, which were okay, moldy and smelled funny, but not cluttered with too much dirt. Went to bed and awoke with the sun because well, I didn’t pack the lanterns or emergency candles. Though I did have two bug candles which we laughingly used. Bad on me for not packing correctly, but bad on the camp ground for not giving me the full service spot I had reserved.
And so my quest to build a solar system from scratch began again. I mean if my camp trailer isn’t considered a real RV, this might happen again and frankly, after riding motorcycles all day long, I really want a hot shower and a bottle of cold water from the refrigerator. If I wanted to camp in a tent I wouldn’t have purchased the camp trailer to begin with right?
So I purchased one more guide on building your own solar systems. The whole reason I purchased the one I purchased was because he talks about geothermal systems. Another passive system that is Eco friendly. That and I thought it was kind of funny that the site owner recorded his video in his garage. Which to me I liked because he was keeping his overhead lower to help keep the costs down. So I purchase his guide, without any grand expectations.!
Home Made Energy <—where I purchased my guide from
Based on my experience from last summer, I didn’t expect much……so I was surprised to find out that it was as easy to understand as it was. And yes, if you have several months of time to spend finding all the information on the Internet, it is all available for free. For the cost of the Home Made Energy guide, it took only minutes. This made it very much worth the time and the value was there with this project. I am happy to say after studying over the weekend, I have even more ideas for the farm in terms of geothermal and other sources of energy (don’t forget my magnet generator). But we went camping again last weekend and yet again were denied a full service spot for our pop-up trailer. I wasn’t so upset this time however as with the help of the Home Made Energy Guide—I had a fully working portable solar system which provided us with hot water and lights, not to mention cold beverages from the refrigerator as well.
I figured if I could swear my way through a magnetic generator, I could do the same with the solar panels. Amazing how easy this stuff is once you dig in and just do it the first time. But the guide made it super simple and easy, if I had to purchase the Home Made Energy Guide again (which I don’t because I already did) I would because it was that complete and easily understood.
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