What are some ideas of a solar system project that does not cost much?

Answer 1

Solar energy is basically heat so why not heat a fluid and use it to run an electrical generator. Get a old large antenna dish and cover it with aluminized mylar. It can be constantly aimed at the sun for a small price in several ways. You can find one that tracked satellites and retrain it. At the focus a ball with the liquid flowing through it gets heated. Use it to run a steam engine or to heat the house. A half pipe approach doesn't require constant tracking. The medium flows through a pipe in a half round channel at its' focal point. As a community project for a school or community building the price could come way down. Window box heaters where you make a rectangular box with channels for heat flow. It is painted black taking air in from the room at the bottom and heated air coming out the top and into a window. Just putting a black plastic hose on your south facing roof will give you steaming hot water. Bread box heaters are very cheap. Just a black box with piping inside that heats water. Do it right and cheap you might develop a salable project. Even the "making of" book or video would be fun to make .

Answer 2

I've seen photos of solar backpacks. I'm not quite sure what they were charging, but perhaps a solar cell phone charger, or a solar radio.
Flexible solar panels/cells would probably be best for this

Can you keep the radio working inside the house?

You will find notes on the web about building solar panels out of aluminum soda cans. It would be interesting, and certainly in the sun you can feel the convection action of solar heating.

Perhaps try a solar oven. Solar cooking an egg?

A fun (but potentially more complex) project might to be to work in a team with another student to make two solar electric toy race cars. Take out the batteries and see if you can get them to run using solar panels. Then have a race.

You will have to think up the rules for the race. I.E. Should your control circuits be solar or battery (both on the car and on the remote). You probably would do better by separating the controls from the drive motor and continuing to run the controls with batteries.
Also determine a common size of cars, solar panels, etc.
Do the two people want to have matching designs (to make a race more fair), or allow each one to be more unique?

Keep in mind if you are building panels. Typical solar cells put out about 1/2 volt. A typical battery (AA, AAA, C, D) puts out about 1.5 volts, and are often arranged in series to increase volts. With solar cells, wire several in series to increase your voltage. Wire several in parallel to increase your amperage. If you wire multiple cells in series, they should all be the same size (putting out the same amps). If you wire multiple sets of cells in parallel, they should each have the same number of elements and put out the same volts.

Adding a capacitor may help get the car rolling on startup.

Answer 3

To make a solar system project from recycle materials check around your house for supplies. Empty toilet paper rolls and tops from plastic bottles can be used. You can also use your imagination for other items that would be useful in your project.