Go Greener Tips

Lots of eco-enthusiasts are attempting to figure out what it will cost to install a set of solar panels. This guidebook is fashioned to aid you in selecting the style of solar panels you require for your installation, homemade or commercially designed.

There are a wide array of expenses that go along with installing solar panels which will be escalated or decreased depending on your intensity of participation with the process of installation. The highest expenditures method entails buying full retail for solar panels and their installment. The least expensive type includes build your own solar panels and installing yourself. This manual will assist you to choose the best style for your situation.

Kilowatt hours, also known as kW h, is the amount of power which is used by the average US household every month (one kW h). In a thirty-one day month there will be seven hundred and forty-four hours. Considering each hour of energy from your grid can be 20 cents, then each month the average house uses one hundred and fourty-eight dollars from the grid. There usually are lots of factors that can differ your monthly electric bill, average watt price or amount of electric consumption levels may vary for each household. Calculating your watt consumption will allow you know the amount of kilowatts your planned solar panel system will need to generate.

At the expensive end of the scale are solar panels that are obtained from a retail shop and installed through one of their workers. This option often costs tens of thousands or more, depending on how much energy your place will require. If professional installation is the path you wish to take, you want to pay attention to the cost per watt when calculating in the price of installation.

Many experts find that the value of professionally installed solar panels can cost on average $7 to $9 per watt. That means a solar panel system that is quoted at 4 kW can cost nearly $28,000 to $36,000.

The question is a bit tricky. The answer involves variable details such as:

- For how long does the sun shine at your home and how many days is it cloudy?
- What angle are you putting the solar panels at for how many hours per day do they get sun?
- How much does the sun filter through the atmosphere depending on your distance from the equator?

Totaling these issues is too complicated to tackle in this manual, but here is an estimate based on a California, San Francisco Bay home. An average house in that area can receive two thousand kW h each year with a one kilowatt solar panel. A usual house in the Bay Area uses eight thousand kW h per year. For a residence there, on average 4 kW capacity is sufficient to cover all power consumption. You can locate numerous calculators for solar energy by googling “solar energy calculators” at google, which will allow you to discover the power you can expect from solar panels at your house.

Assuming a commercial installment by professionals, again referencing the 4 kilowatt hour scenario detailed above, a professional installation can be around twenty eight to thirty six thousand dollars. If you receive less sunshine than California, it would be more expensive. This is not an average of the price of kW h, but we will assume that energy from your grid averages $0.20 per kilowatt hour (within California). Eight thousand kW h per year totals $1600.

This places the pay-off date past twenty years. Several professional installers have specials which, if added to government subsidies and tax breaks, may at times reduce this figure to 15 years. This remains far too costly for most consumers to invest in a solar panel system.

An excellent alternative to reduce the total cash necessary for a solar installation is to do it yourself. There is a do-it-yourself kit that explains how to build your own solar panels. Building your own is a viable way to reduce the price of a solar panel system from too-costly to affordable.

You do not need to be a carpenter, anyone can make solar panels using the right guide, using pictures and diagrams. Anyone can build their own solar panels with comprehensive training videos, reducing the price of your installation by tens of thousands. What is required are good directions that can take you through the process step-by-step using many methods of teaching, like a well-written training manual and instructional videos.

This article is brought to you by George Zalcman. George Zalcman has always had a passion for green technologies, and believes that we should all get on the boat before natural resources become limited. George Zalcman is part of an air to water technology hoping that this will eventually bring an end to the water crisis as well.