First In The Netherlands

Home Build Solar System

April 24th 2009

Holland ’s first home build solar panel is in operation

The electricity prices are rising and rising and will only keep on rising and the environmental impact will only become greater.

This and my curiosity for new things made me thinking that I need to do something at my electricity bills and to give my share towards the current environmental issue the world has got.

The first thing that we did at home was energy saving as after all nothing will change if you don’t have the right mind set and keep on wasting energy.

The second thing we did was looking to means of generating our own electricity.

And here the challenge started.

Generating your own electricity is a small job if you say this sentence quick, but doing it is a complete other matter.

The biggest thing nature has got to offer in Holland is wind and water, and there for I focused my energy surge at first to this.

Where I live there is not much free flowing water (like streams or rivers as Holland is pretty flat) so this plan when quickly put aside.

Next came wind power.

To install a windmill which produced enough power to power up the house I needed planning permission, agreements with the electricity board, etc, etc, etc.

And the prices of those mills are high, it would take an enormous amount of years to get the costs out of this project.

And after all my location is in a buildup area, where the council is not waiting for someone to install a high structure as this.

So I started to consider other options.

The option left is solar energy, as after all the sun provides us on a daily basis with so much energy that if we can manage to harvest it all we can’t even use it all.

But Holland is in such a location on this globe that we don’t have sunshine that much and there for the costs should be low.

The costs of a solar installation is not cheap and governmental support low.

So after many hours of surging the Internet I decided that building a solar panel was the way forward.

It took some hours but see below the first panel, and I made 2 and is the system finally in operation.

The main lesson learned is, that a lot of the existing operators, electricity board and solar shops are pretty negative as they think this can't be done and it won't work.

But this should not stop you as the reward of seeing your system working is great.

It's a great way for to make solar electricity for home use.

All I can say is, start building.