Homemade Energy is another guide on how to make your own solar panels. There are quite a number of these guides available online and it’s starting to look like many of them are cashing in on the success of similar products available on the market. What sets one guide apart from the others is how well they explain everything and how easy they are to follow. Homemade Energy consists of a 44 page downloadable manual and several online videos.
The author of Homemade Energy has bold claims about being able to save 80% off your electricity bill and also claims you can do this for less than $200. I have to say I agree with him, except when it comes to doing it for $200 which is how much it will cost you to make a single solar panel. In reality you will need several to cut your bills by 80% so this a bit of hype in my opinion. Don’t let that put you off the product though unless you only have $200 to spend. I’m saying you might need to budget $1000-$2000 depending on how many panels you need. As with similar products Homemade energy shows you how to make windmills as well as solar panels.
The manual combined with the online videos does do a pretty good job at explaining everything. However the manual isn’t as clear as some of the other guides available. This isn’t a problem if you are DIY proficient but for those who aren’t they may struggle a bit.
The author of Homemade Energy seems to be trying too hard to operate on a tight a budget as possible so the quality of the components that you are told to source is lacking compared to similar guides. In my opinion the costs savings are so significant when you build your own solar panels that you really don’t need to obsess about the costs this much as you will save so much more in a very short time. The author does do a very good job of keeping the costs down. One example of this is with the wind turbine where you build the turbine blades out of PVC piping.
The manual is accompanied with a system sizing worksheet that helps you to calculate your power consumption to determine how many solar panels, batteries etc that you will need.
As a result of writing this Homemade Energy review and being able to compare it with similar products I have to say that it may not be as easy to follow as say Earth4Energy. However it does have the advantage of showing you how to make the components as cheaply as possible. There is a little bit of hype that I mentioned earlier as it claims you can build a system for about $200 that will save you $80. In reality that will make you one or two solar panels that will power an appliance or two. Homemade Energy is best suited to people with some DIY experience and who are also operating on a budget.
