Below find our reviews of the Top 5 How to Build Solar Panels Guides.  Each of the guides reviewed also include How to Build Wind Generators Guide because the two go hand in hand.  Meaning, if at all possible, you should include a wind generator to supplement feeding your solar panel batteries. 

In my research for viable do it yourself green energy guides, there is one thing that astounded me, and that was the range of quality of information on how to convert your home to off grid green energy. Someone looking into actually going off grid can learn how to convert their home to clean energy by following several guide books.  Speaking to you as one who has lived completely off grid, and have built and installed a wind generator, I can tell you that you that it can be done even if you aren't particularly "handy" as the guides we recommend do explain and visually show you how to build.  So go ahead and get started today if you want to build an off grid power station of your own.  Feel as empowered as I did the first time I plugged into clean free energy, and watched satellite Television as my neighbors all experienced days upon days of outages from storms.  

There are literally hundreds of products out there that teach you how to switch a home to solar or wind-generated energy, but some just don't explain it thoroughly enough to make the building process go fast and easy.  When you look at these guides, only a few of them are super clear and thorough.  I'm currently writing an ebook on how to build a solar powered home heater.  I'm writing it exactly as if I were standing right there next to you. So the guides I recommend are as close to this ideal as possible. 

Converting your home using professionally-installed store-bought products is an expensive proposition. You'll cut your solar panel cost down to about half.  The one I'm working on in my garage at this moment only cost me in solar cells, solder, the iron, and some free glass. To save hundreds if not thousands of dollars, many are turning to do-it-yourself books just as I did, and are making the move to go green on their own. With the wide range of information available, let's first discuss what to look for in a good go-green guide.

First, a program that teaches you to convert your home is NOT the only thing you need. You will need a few low-cost tools, and order your solar cells for example, but after that, you'll be all set.  

Secondly, NOT every home is appropriate for green conversion. If you live in an condo for example you don't always have the surface area for solar panels, or the land required to setup a windmill or adequate room for a solar panel.  However, with that said, I own a condominium and at this moment, our home owners Association has agreed to installing both solar electricity panels as well as solar air heaters.  I will also be adding the windmill shortly.  So it can be done if everyone on the condo/housing association is on board.  Our goal is to lower our monthly costs of electricity and gas so our Association fee can actually go down.  Plus, ours will be one of the first in our neighborhood to start lowering our building's fossil fuel footprint.But for now, we'll admit, we're doing it to save cash. 

Thirdly, a how-to guide on solar panels and wind generators should explain how to convert your home to reduce and even get rid of your monthly power bill. In fact, if you do it right, you'll likely generate more energy than you use, and the power company will have to pay you for the power you feed back into the grid. Best of all, if you choose the right methods to convert your home it can be done for very little cost to you. In my case, I found the materials suggested were easy to find, and get started building the panels.  I learned where to find the glass and even found way more than I needed.

Finally, if you don't take the time to choose the right learning tools then you're just wasting your money and time. I've been burned many times by guides that didn't explain everything I needed.  I've even sent them emails with corrections for their books!  Plus, you even run the risk of creating problems for yourself when your real estate value drops due to the non-working solar panels that are covering the roof.  What's nice about the guides, they do show you how to make your projects look pretty professional-looking.  Choosing the right guide to learn with is the most important part of your success.

To help you choose a green power guide that works, along with some friends, I have worked to evaluate the top five downloadable learning products on the market today. We based my evaluations on what we thought was essential...And one more thing to mention is that these downloaded books also save on thousands of pounds of paper.  If you can read them without printing the entire guide out, maybe just some, you're doing that much more to save trees!

We asked ourselves, Does the guide provide the following?

• Green Power - Obviously our main goal is to create actual electricity.  Green power needs to perform as well as on-grid. We tested how much power each do it yourself solar panel and windmill generated. 
• Ease of Building - Can you reproduce what they are teaching you?  With a guide that teaches how to convert a home to green power, the material list should be clearly laid out, and the components of each project be it a solar panel or a wind generator, should be simple to build and built in a craftsman-like manner.  I like to call this "factory".  In other words, will your project look like a pro did it?  A good design should look as good as it performs.
• Instructional Value - From the above criteria we gave higher ratings to those learning packages that taught us how to go green with ease. The best packages had everything clearly explained, drawn blueprints, and then further explained with how-to videos.  Videos are key in my opinion.  In an instant you can glean just what you're supposed to be doing.
• Low Cost Materials - The main reason you and I and people like us choose to convert their home ourselves is to save money. So, of course we gave much higher ratings to the packages that taught us how to find parts for less.  It's fun being able to create a money saving device, and also do so darn cheap.
  
• Good Availability of Parts - Some of the learning packages we tested recommended parts that weren't available. This is maddening in itself and we will save you this headache.  We gave higher marks to those that used parts that were widely available in your local hardware or big building centers.
• Short Time in getting completed - The last thing you want is get in the middle of a solar panel project and not be able to finish it.  Next thing you know, you have the cat laying on your solar cells.  We found this had a lot to do with how well the material was explained, but some of the plans just weren't simple enough.