Earth4Energy provides a step by step guide to building your own solar electricity generation system.

It covers the various aspects like

• Determining the power consumption of your home appliances and sizing your solar system accordingly
• Insolation maps
• Basics of photovoltaic cells 
• Differents components/ parts used
• Sizing / selection of wires, PV cells, batteries
• Wiring diagram / series / parallel connection

Fairly comprehensive, but some parts like the maps are not universally applicable.