Making a Solar Powered House!

Making a solar home can be a difficult challenge, and without guidance or knowing how to start, it can seem like a distant dream that is perceived to be unachievable. Luckily, you don’t have to worry because I’m going to help you with your solar house design! In this step-by-step Instructable, I’m going to teach you how to make a solar-powered house!

Supplies

The first step in making anything is gathering your supplies. The amount of each thing you need may vary, but you will need these things:

• Cardboard
• Hot glue gun
• Soldering gun 
• Solder
• An exacto knife 
• 16 AWG wire
• Wire strippers
• Alligator clips
• USB extension
• Car USB to Micro-USB adapter
• 3 solar panels
• Portable battery with a micro USB and USB port
• 3 LEDS
• 4 resistors (220 ohm)
• Electrical and blue tape
• Mini music player
• Patience!

Step 1: Sketching a Floor Plan

After gathering your supplies, what you want to do is sketch out an IDEA of what you want your floor plan to be. Whether it’s as simple as a quadrilateral or as complicated as a professional plan with 15 rooms, make your you know how much material you have, and how realistic your project can be! Make sure that your dimensions are written so you don’t get confused, and that you must take into account the thickness of your cardboard when sketching. Remember, shoot for the stars!

Step 2: Basic House Architechture

Once you have a floor plan and your dimensions, find a flat surface on which you can cut your cardboard. Take your knife and carefully cut out your outer walls. Glue your walls onto your base, so it looks like the image shown, or somewhat similar. Remember, this doesn’t have to be perfect, have fun with it! The goal is to make the house powered by solar. Making the house look pretty is the last thing you have to worry about. Another thing to keep in mind is to be able to access the interior part of your house so your wiring process can be easier.

Step 3: Advanced House Architechture

Once the basics of your house are done, add whatever else you want to add on the outside architecturally. I made a second floor in my house, albeit it looks a little silly. The slant that you see on the left side of my house is tilted at roughly a 38-degree angle, as are the two panel mounts on the top. It’s important to keep in mind the angle is 38 degrees because in Santa Rosa the latitude is 38.44, and the latitude tilt angle is based on maximizing the annual energy production of the solar panel. Tilting the solar panel at the latitude angle helps maximize the annual energy production by optimizing the exposure to sunlight throughout the year. This angle ensures that the solar panel receives the most sunlight on average across all seasons. It is also simple and effective, as well as not expensive compared to auto-adjusting panel mounts. To maximize the panel’s solar exposure, panels ALWAYS need to be perpendicular to the sun, and by using the things mentioned above, we can ensure this. Another thing, panel azimuth is the direction your solar panels are facing in terms of compass direction. In order to find out what tilt angle is best for your solar panels, look up the latitude of the area you live in, and use that angle for your solar panels.

Step 4: Interior Design(Not Crucial)

Once you’re done with the shell of your house, you can start adding interior walls and furniture of your choice. I also used small hinges to make my house be able to open up so I could go through my wiring process with ease! This is optional of course, but it’s a good idea to keep in mind.

Step 5: Snipping and Stripping

Once your cardboard house is constructed, we will move on to the wiring process. First things first, you’re going to take your USB, mine has a power switch just as a kill switch, which also serves as a master power switch that will allow power to flow to all of my devices, and your wire strippers. Then you’re going to cut off the female part of the USB and strip it.

Step 6: Soldering and Taping

Once it’s stripped you’ll notice a second small wire. You’re going to strip that wire. But KEEP IT SEPERATE from the bigger wire bundle. Once those two are separated, you’re going to solder some 16 AWG wire to each of the wires, followed up by covering both exposed wires with electrical tape so they don’t short-circuit. As you can see, I used heat shrink instead of electrical tape, but electrical tape will work just as well. Keep this to the side, we’ll need it soon.

Step 7: Wiring the Supply Side

Now, the first thing we will learn how to wire is the supply side, otherwise known as the solar panels providing power to the battery. The two smaller solar panels have the car adapter which you can take apart by unscrewing the little screw that keeps it together. Then, you’re going to see a short and a long side, which are the positive and negative sides. The shorter side is positive, and the longer side is negative. You then take your alligator clips and connect one to each terminal on the solar panel. You’ll end up doing this for all three panels. I will also teach you about voltage and amperage, as well as what that has to do with our circuit. Voltage is like potential energy, or you can think of it as the pressure in a water hose. Voltage is the same thing, except rather than water, it’s electricity! The “push” is what makes the electricity move through a wire. If there is more voltage, then there is a higher “push”. Voltage is measured in volts, just as water pressure is measured in PSI. If we take the water hose analogy again, and describe amperage, amperage is the “current”, which is like the amount of water flowing through said hose. If there is a higher amperage reading, then there are more electrons flowing. Imagine a wider stream and a narrow stream. If the stream is narrow, then there is less flow, or amperage. But is the stream is wide, then there is a lot of space for the electricity to flow, resulting in more amparage. Amperage is measured in amps, so for example is someone is talking about a 5 amp circuit, there are five amps flowing through that circuit. A circuit, in short, is a complete circular path that electricity flows through.

Step 8: Wiring the Supply Side(pt. 2)

After you do the same for all of the solar panels, you should see something like this. The bundle of wires on the top left, top middle, and middle right should all be connected to the car USB adapter, which directs power to the battery. Now, this supply side is wired in parallel. I will explain why soon.

Step 9: Hooking Up to the USB to MicroUSB Car Adapter

Once all of the terminals have an alligator clip, the other ends of the alligator clip will be connected to the car USB to Micro-USB adapter. Just as we did to the solar panels, you’ll unscrew the screw that keeps the adapter together. You will find a small stub and two curved terminals on each side, the stub is positive and the two curved terminals are negative. Connect the alligator clips to their corresponding sides, + to + and - to -. That micro-USB will be plugged into the battery, thus finalizing the supply side of this solar system.

Step 10: Wiring the Load Side

Now, onto the load side of the solar system. You will need to take out your three switches and fasten them wherever you would like on your house. I placed mine near the front of my house. Try to make these easily accessible, as we will be wiring them lots soon. Besides the switches, you are also going to add all of your components, including the fan, music player, and 3 LEDs which are going to be wired in parallel. I will teach you how to wire the components and LEDs in the next step.

Step 11: Wiring the LEDs(In Parallel)

To wire the LEDs, we’re going to take the parallel circuit diagram as an example. Notice how the long lines on the top and the bottom represent the negative and positive wires in a circuit? Using that info, we can take two pieces of the 16 AWG wire to whatever length you need it to be, and strip a good bit of it. Once both pieces of wire are stripped, you’re going to want to take your soldering iron and solder a resistor on each LED’s positive leg. Note that the shorter leg is negative, and the longer one is positive. Then, you will solder the new extended LEDs on the wires as shown. The resistor end should be on the wire you choose to be your positive wire, and the regular leg should be on your negative wire. Bending the LED legs is OK!

Step 12: Learning About Circuits

After you secure your switches, which will be controlling the fan, music player, and LEDs(which will be wired in parallel), we are ready to wire. First things first, as you can see on the left of this image, the negative wire coming out of my USB killswitch wire is what we are going to be soldering our wires. There are two ways to wire things, one is in series, and the other is in parallel. There is a distinct difference between the two, and keep in mind we are wiring this in parallel. A series circuit is a circuit that forms a single path for current flow, resulting in all of the components being connected end-to-end. If one component doesn’t work, then the whole circuit won’t work. It’s like having a circular race track, if you blow up a part of the track, the race cars won’t be able to race on that track. On the other hand, a parallel circuit has two or more paths for the current to flow through. Up to 1,000 paths can be designed, and even if one of the components breaks, it’s all right because the other paths are independent and the circuit will continue to work. The reason that we wired the load side, the solar panels, in parallel, is because when wiring in parallel, we emphasize on amperage, rather than when we are in series, there is more voltage rather than amperage. If we have too much voltage, our little components will possibly burn out, and we do not want that. What we want is for these components to work well and not burn out and blow up, so we wire in parallel.

Step 13: Wiring Components!

You’re essentially going to want to do the same thing we did with the LED for both the positive and negative wires, and solder/wire them in parallel. Both alligator clips and soldering will work great, I did a little mix of the two, and it worked out just fine, and ultimately it’s up to you! When wiring the music player, make sure to solder your last 220 ohm resistor onto your music player. It does not matter what side you solder it to. When wiring components, you are going to want to connect an alligator clip to one side of the switch, let's say the positive side, and from there connect it to the positive side of your component. Don't worry, If you don't know what side is negative and what side is positive, just flip the side you're plugging them into until it works! Once the positive side is connected, connect the negative side of the component to another alligator clip, which will then connect directly to the positive side of the USB battery wire, giving you a complete circuit for that one component. I soldered my negative switch wire to my USB battery wire. The next step will show you an example of what a the wired component should look like in the same order that it was given to you in this step. The individual loads that I got for each component are as follows:

• Fan:
• Amps: 0.3MA
• Volts: 2.3
• LEDs:
• Amps: 22MA
• Volts: 2.2-5
• Music Player:
• Amps: 0.8MA
• Volts: 3.2

Step 14: Component Wiring Example

Alrighty, ready for this? (1)First, solder the negative switch wire to the negative USB battery wire. (2)Then, connect the positive side of the switch to an alligator clip. (3)Then, the other end of that alligator clip connects to the component's positive wire. (4)After that, the component's negative wire connects to an alligator clip, which then (5)connects to the the positive USB battery wire, and BOOM! there you have it, a component is wired! Now repeat the process for the other components, and if you want a challenge, attempt to add a potentiometer to your LED circuit so control how dim the light can be.

Step 15: Final Steps and Checks

Finally, after all of the wiring is said and done, you can go ahead and make everything look pretty. You can use blue tape to fasten things down on your house, bundle up excess wire with zip ties, etc etc. When the moment is right, you will look down upon your beautiful creation and flip a switch, feeling the extreme joy knowing you have just built a fully self reliant, solar powered home. Congratulations! If there are any questions at all, please leave them down in the comments and I will do my best to answer them.