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Fancy yourself as a do it yourself (DIY) handyman or woman? Want to substitute your traditional energy source for cleaner, cheaper alternative energy? Well there are now diy solar panels solutions to power your home that you can build yourself and for minimal financial out lay.

I'm sure you would agree that the current economic crisis and global warming status is alarming, wouldn't you like to do your bit to reduce your carbon footprint as well as slash those large power bills that keep turning up in your mail box? Well read on to learn more.

Growing numbers of people are now building their own solar panels to help supplement the energy requirements of their homes.

In the last couple of years, guides to build your own solar panels have sprung up across the Internet. These guides reveal that making your own solar panel is not as complicated or as expensive as we are lead to believe. In fact you will probably be shocked to know that you can build your own do it yourself solar panels for as little as $200 with materials easily obtainable from your local hardware store.

Ensuring you get a good guide is critical, there are many dubious guides out there that I would highly recommend you avoid. Having said that there are also a few excellent ones, what you want to be sure to do is to find a guide which comes with video instruction as well as written and at least email support.

You will need some tools, such as hammer, tin snips, glue and clamps to put the cells and panels together, but no other specialised tools are required. The only other requirement is to free up a couple of days on the weekend and enlist the help of a friend or family member (if you have kids it's the perfect project to get them involved in, we found it to be a great educational exercise).

Now I am sure you are sceptical, I know I was, can a homemade solar panel that costs as little as $200 really work? Well the answer is yes. Whilst we are yet to achieve more than around 40%, many people claim to have replaced as much as 80% of their electricity with solar! This translates to savings of hundreds of dollars in many cases slashed from every power bill.

Having said that most people use their DIY solar panels to supplement their household energy needs, combining both electrical and solar energy. This still leads to significant financial savings as well as having the positive impact of reducing the carbon footprint you have left on the environment.

So as you can see there are indeed effective do it yourself solar energy solutions to power your home, you just need to make sure you get a good, easy to follow guide that walks you through the whole process one step at a time.