My Wind Solar Home Blog

DIY solar panels for the home are not as hard to construct as many people think. It may seem intimidating at first until you learn that you can buy most of your supplies at Home Depot and get the job done in just one day.

I’ve been interested in solar power for a few years now. Putting a couple of home DIY solar panels on my rooftop didn’t just happen. I remember as a kid in the garden looking at the vegetables we had and wondering how the sun had made them grow and expand.

I knew that solar was a powerful source of energy just from the sunburns I received while playing sports in my youth and from the tomatoes, corn and pumpkins I watched grow. Like plants, home DIY solar panels on your rooftop sit and collect energy from sun up to sun down.

The harvest that you receive is a continual one in the form of rolling back your meter and lowering the bills from the utility companies.

There are a lot of people in windy areas that want to construct their very own residential DIY wind turbines. It’s not as hard or overwhelming as it seems.

My interest goes back to a farm in Michigan that my grandpa built for corn, soybeans, pigs and chickens. Near the farmhouse he had a windmill that served to pump water from the well. As a kid, I was fascinated with this windmill.

I would stare up and down, wondering how the power of the wind and water way beneath the surface could combine in such a natural way to provide the home with what it needed. Perhaps this interest in the “Old Windmill” is what made me continue on the journey of building my own residential wind turbine.

As I’ve explained on the main website, I’m not a natural do-it-yourself person. I’ve recoiled from DIY projects over the years and left many unfinished. So, when I was able to construct a working wind turbine for my home one day over the weekend, I became very proud of my accomplishment.

There is something very satisfying at the core in building a project yourself and seeing it work as planned. Now, I let Mother Nature do her job and supply my family with the energy we need. I’m not on a farm, but I think back to that farm of old many times when I look at my new invention on my rooftop spinning and I imagine my grandpa smiling down from the heavens.

While solar energy and wind energy on a massive scale is a noble cause, one fear that people have is that the large utilities that own these renewable resources will go on acting like big utility companies. Even though our skies may clear up a bit from the utility companies using more wind turbines and solar panels, the price advantage may not trickle down to consumers.

But, consumers do have a choice. The choice is to install your own wind generator or solar energy system. This off-grid or partially off-grid approach will reduce home electricity bills, improve the environment and reduce dependence not upon foreign oil, but rather upon the large utility companies.

With energy independence from the utilities, comes a new found sense of freedom, the democratization of energy and the empowerment that can only come with creating your own energy.