• Buy Cheap Solar Cells
• Cost Per Watt of Ebay Solar Cells
• Solar Cell Cost of Building a 120 Watt Solar Panel
• Make Solar Panels Yourself

Buy Cheap Solar Cells

One of the more popular pages on the internet on how to build a solar panel from “scratch” with solar cells purchased on ebay, can be found by a guy named Mike Davis at mdpub.com. In his guide, he is building a solar panel using 3×6 mono-crystalline solar cells. At the time of his publication, he was able to snatch up 72 solar cells like this for $148.

Mike’s page is definitely worth a read, but it is several years old now — the prices of solar cells have thus changed a bit. At the time he made his solar panel, he was paying over $2 each. Furthermore, he was promoting the fact that he could find them that cheap because he was looking for blemished and otherwise imperfect solar cells.

Researching ebay right now, I am seeing bricks of 36 3×6 mono-crystalline solar cells for $35.71. These are the same 1/2 amp solar cells that Mike made his solar panel with, brand new and unblemished, for 99 cents each with tabs.

You can save even more money by buying solar cells without tabs. Another deal I see on ebay for un-tabbed solar cells is $39.99 for 46, or 87 cents each. Solar cells without tabs are a bit of a challenge, but with the right guide you can handle them easy. Check out my page on how to solder solar cells to see how easy it is to put the tabs on your solar cells yourself, saving money.

Then there are B Grade solar cells, which are chipped and cracked. These may be a little more difficult to work with (our guide explains working with imperfect solar cells), but the lot of these are 72 for $40.31, or 56 cents each. How good are the B Grade solar cells you are buying from any particular seller? Fortunately with ebay, you can see buyer reviews of sellers. Check out the feedback of any seller to verify whether the solar cells they are selling are actually usable, and what experience the buyers had in working with the seller, such as timely shipping, etc.

Cost Per Watt of Ebay Solar Cells

These 3×6 mono-crystalline solar cells are the same ones that Mike Davis used in his famous solar cell example (for the most part). These cells are 1/2 amp, some producing 1.55 watts, some up to 1.75 watts each. Mike’s original solar panel ended up being 60 watts using 36 solar cells, or an average of 1.66 watts per cell.

What then is the cost per watt of these solar cells you can buy off ebay? The new, tabbed solar cells mentioned above were 99 cents each — at an average of 1.66 watts per solar cell that would be 59 cents per watt! The brand new, un-tabbed at 87 cents ends up being 52 cents per watt. The chipped, cracked solar cells end up being approximately 34 cents per watt, although there will be additional loss there due to the condition of the B Grade solar cells.

Are you starting to see how it can be possible to make your own solar panel for far less than $1 per watt?

The most expensive and complex part of your solar panel is the solar cells.  As you can see, it is possible to pick them up from between 34 cents and 59 cents per watt.  Everything else you need to build your own solar panel can be purchased from your local hardware store.  Why wouldn’t you give building your own solar panel a try?

Solar Cell Cost of Building a 120 Watt Solar Panel

How good is a 120 watt solar panel?  How much will a 120 watt solar panel offset your current electricity bill?  Read more on solar power panels paying for themselves here, where I discuss that the average home will consume around 920 kWh (kilowatt hours), per month in electricity. If your home consumes around 920 kWh per month, you would need around 34 solar panels that produce 120 watts to completely offset your electric bill (this is assuming A LOT of things, and may vary depending on the amount of sunshine hours, how cloudy it is, distance from equator — we provide an accurate solar power calculator with our solar panel guide).

A 120 watt solar panel will require 72 mono-crystalline solar cells.  Assuming you are paying full price for already-tabbed solar cells, this will cost you around $72.  Soldering the solar cells yourself will reduce the price to around $63 (this is still working with new, flawless solar cells).  If you shop around, I am certain you can find even better prices than what I listed above for ebay, all I did was look at the first page — if you scour ebay for the cheapest solar cells I am certain you eventually can find them cheaper from various sellers.

If you don’t mind soldering the solar cells yourself, at $63 worth of solar cells per panel, and needing 34 solar panels to completely offset 920,000 watt hours of use per month, you are looking at $2142 worth of solar cells to bring the average US home to net-zero on power consumption! (Again — average as being six hours of peak sunshine per day. Many places only have 4 hours of peak sunshine, which could increase your solar cell needs up to 50%. Even so — 50% more solar cells will push the total up to $3213, which is still a far cry less than what most professional installers want for retail commercial solar panels.)

Of course, there is far more to installing solar panels beyond the solar cells.  The $2142 figure representing the solar cell cost of a 4 kWh installation is only part of the expenses.  For a more detailed explanation of the real costs of a homemade solar panel installation, check out this link.

Make Solar Panels Yourself

It can’t hurt to try building your own solar panels. Our guide has an unconditional 60 day full money-back guarantee. If for any reason you are unsatisfied with our solar panel guide, you can receive a full refund, no questions asked. A retail solar panel installation by professionals can cost $25,000 to $35,000 — and if you want to consume more than 920 kWh per month, the bill can be much more! You will see that our guide is well structured, with hours of instructional video, blueprints, diagrams and all the instructions you need to make a solar panel.  For more information on our guide, with testimonials, click below.

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