Particularly home built or inexpensive solar energy. I’m looking for something that will explain the entire process. Many books I have found assume previous knowledge of the subject and usually end with me Googling for a couple hours. Thanks!

You can go for "Earth4Energy". It offers a lot of fantastic home made solar solutions on their site, which can be built easily, for the low cost of less than $200.

The features are :
* Full and detailed instructions given which can be easily understood by a layman or the unskilled for building a home made solar panel.
* Other details on how to obtain the components available in the neighborhood material store for preparing the home made solar system.
* Tips on how to construct the alternative energy generators that is not readily available anywhere else.
* One time investment – and life long updates to the manual and video series, at no additional cost.
* Full cash back if you are not saving hundreds of dollars per month on your energy bill after using the system for eight months.
* Detailed instructions explained by videos

There are also testimonials given on this site. You can go through them.
http://solarpanels-for-home.blogspot.com

All the best

Where I can find interesting posts about renewable energy, solar panels, ecology and so on…

Check out the learn section at the AltE Store. http://www.altestore.com/learn/. We have articles and free videos to learn about solar electric, solar water heating, energy efficiency, etc.

I know that solar panels get there energy from the sun, but is it just from its heat? Many other things give off heat, like a heat lamp. I put a solar powered light i found up to a heat lamp for a minute and it had energy to produce light for a long time. I don’t know what else it could be, just want to know for sure.

Thanks in advance.
Oh — well in this case I’m talking about solar panels that produce electricity.

Solar electric panels (photovoltaics) use the light of the sun to produce electricity. Heat actually lowers their efficiency and causes them to produce less electricity.

If the energy is obtained from the sun, is it obtained from the heat or UV rays of the sun? Also, after it obtains the energy, how does it transfer that into usable energy? Lastly, is it immediately usable or is it stored until its use is required?

Solar electric panels (photovoltaic panels) use the light of the sun to produce electricity. They are made out of semiconductor materials like silicon (the same stuff that’s in your computer), which is treated so it’s positively charged on one side and negatively charged on the other.

When light energy strikes this "solar cell", electrons are knocked loose from the semiconductor material, and at this point they can be captured in the form of an electric current so they can be put to work.

Solar panels produce DC electricity which must be converted to AC by a solar power inverter before it can be used to power household appliances.

If you have a battery bank, the power can be stored for later use.

Now that scientists can look at events the happen on a femtosecond time scale, they will be able to fully understand how plants convert sunlight into energy. Will this improve our solar energy technology?

Photosynthesis is considered to be 5% efficient.1 Solar photovoltaic panels to convert sunlight to electricity that you can buy are from 8 to 22% efficient.2 In the lab they have gotten up to 42% efficiency.3 Solar thermal panels used to heat hot water are from 60 to 80% efficient.4