What is black and covers square miles of area? If you answered roads than you're right! Roads all over the world cover huge amounts of area, but they only serve one purpose- to help us get to our destination.

I personally find it quite entertaining to read some of the letters to the editor of magazines or newspapers. While I do agree with some points of the letter... namely that the costs are still quite high. I don't really think that nuclear power is the answer.

A good question when building solar panels is how much voltage do you want it to put out? It's basically a question of balancing size and power. First though, let's talk about the minimum voltage that you'd need for the 3 main renewable energy system voltages: 12V, 24V and 48V.

What are the parts to build solar panels? It may or may not surprise you that there are very few parts needed to build solar panels. Obviously, the most important part is the solar cells so lets start there.

You did read that. The highly inefficient thin film solar cells have almost caught up to the standard silicon solar cells. Although these cells aren't going to be coming into production anytime soon, but the future might hold a drastic price decrease for solar cells.

Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory have come up with a new formulation for thin film solar cells that can compete with the efficiency of the common silicon based solar cell.

Why should you look into building solar panels? For me it wasn't really about how much money I would save. I just wanted to get rid of the monthly mortgage payment to the electric company. It seemed like energy rates kept going up and up and it doesn't look like they will be coming down anytime soon.

I've recently had several people ask me "what type of solder do I use when building my solar panels?". It's a good question with several right answers. Put simply, you can use whatever solder you want for building your solar panel (provided you don't use plumbing solder).