A solar panel may appear to be too complicated to build for a garage or kitchen, but a crude solar panel can be made from a handful of ordinary tools, scrap parts, some copper sheeting, a leftover case of clear glass bottles and a kitchen burner or hot plate. This easy-to-build project makes a good science project for kids, under parental supervision.
Instructions
1. Get an old crate or a case of clear glass bottles with wide mouths. Snapple bottles, or something similar, are ideal. A bottle neck or opening that is too narrow will make the copper strip to be cut later too small to be of any use.
2. Put the bottles in a dishwasher and run them through a wash-and-rinse cycle to soak them. Do not use the dry cycle. Use the plastic scouring pad to remove the soaked labels from the bottles. A sink of warm water also will work, but will require more elbow grease.
3. Cut most of the cardboard case away, so that only the bottom and the frame remain. Leave just enough cardboard around the edges of the bottom to give the 24 bottles a little stability. The end result should leave plenty of exposed surface area for soaking up sunlight.
4. Measure the height of one bottle and the width of its mouth.
5. Cut 48 strips from the copper sheeting, using the sheet metal sheers. The strips should be cut using the measurements you took in Step 4, with two adjustments: Subtract 1/4 inch from the bottle's height and subract 1/3 or 1/4 inch from the bottle's width. This will ensure a good fit and that the copper strips won't come into contact inside the bottle.
6. Take 24 strips and heat them to red-hot over a gas burner or with an electric hotplate or a blow torch. You can use thongs to hold the strips, but make sure the thongs are insulated. A layer of black oxide will form on one side of the strips.
7. Scrub off the black oxide by gently using the plastic scouring pad. There will be a layer of pinkish-red oxide underneath. That is the oxide you want to keep. To repeat: Scrub off the black; keep the red.
8. Insert a red oxide strip and a clean strip into each bottle. Clip them to the sides of the bottles using the alligator clips. Make sure the two strips do not touch. If they do, the result will be a short circuit.
9. Now strip off the insulation from the ends of the wires extending from your alligator clips. All 24 wires will need to be spliced together, so that all the current will flow down one wire. How this is done will depend heavily on the size of your bottles. An example would be to take all the positive leads from a row of four bottles, splice the four leads to a new piece of positive wiring and cap them all with a wire nut. In a case of 24 bottles, this would result in six positive joint leads, which can be spliced together to a third wire in the same manner. Repeating the process with the negative leads will ultimately join all the cells to one wire. Whatever arrangement is used for splicing the leads together and into one wire, remember to keep the negative and positive leads separate.
10. Mix up enough saltwater to fill all the bottles between a half and two-thirds full. Use warm water, and keep adding salt until it stops dissolving while being stirred. This will ensure a super-saturated solution.
11. Connect the panel's wire to an ammeter, a device that measures current. Measure the output before deciding what kind of lightbulb (or other appliance) to attach to your panel. While the difference in electrical output between a 16 oz.- and a 32-oz. bottle may be small, multiplied by 24 it will add up. The difference between a panel using small bottles and one using large bottles could be substantial. It needs to be measured.
12. Place your unit in full sun at midday and measure its electrical output. It will take only a few seconds for the copper sheets and salt water to start reacting. Use this to choose an appropriate appliance to connect to it.
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