Energy conscious homeowners find themselves in the midst of a solar energy revolution and an unstable financial market. While we know in our hearts home solar energy is a good idea, practically speaking, it must make economic sense for the average American to embrace it. Organizing your home energy use around a 3-phase plan can make solar energy affordable.

With rising energy prices, dwindling fossil fuel supplies, and environmental and human concerns, all ears are attuned to the solar energy possibilities. But the road to solar euphoria is not a well-worn path. You are a pioneer on a new frontier.

Solar energy makes logical sense. Solar energy is a clean, abundant, and local energy source. No moving mechanical parts mean minimal maintenance requirements. Busy people love low maintenance. And who would not want a home running on a limitless, local energy supply that put no pollutants into the air? But current solar prices can cut the energy conversation short.

Sticker shock stops us in our tracks. How do we afford a solar home energy system? Still financially more expensive than fossil fuel, solar is becoming more affordable. Recent government tax incentives should stimulate the market for all renewable energy resources, solar included.

So how do we make it affordable?

Here are the three (3) steps to affordable home solar energy.

1. Conservation – The less energy your home uses, the smaller your carbon footprint, and the less you will spend on solar energy.

The process begins with mental attitude. Develop, maintain, and teach a habit of conservation in all areas of your life. Plan ahead so you drive less. Recycle even though it takes planning. When you landscape use plants native to your area; you will spend less time on yard maintenance. Take your lunch to work; it saves grocery and fuel dollars.

As you practice these conservation habits, discuss with your kids why the habits are good. When you visit with your neighbors and co-workers ask them how they practice conservation. They may share some new ideas with you.

To learn how to conserve energy at home, have a professional home energy audit. Call your local energy provider and ask if they will do home energy audits for their customers. If they do not offer this service, they should be able to give you names of local home energy audit professionals who can help you.

2. Efficiency — A home energy auditor can tell you how to conserve electricity. But more importantly, he will assess your home for energy efficiency. Learn to be efficient in our home energy consumption. Efficient as apposed to wasteful. Some items they check include insulation, windows, hot water heater, air conditioning, and heating systems.

Here are some simple things your energy auditor may suggest. Change to compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs). Weather-strip your doors and windows. Install a timer on your hot water heater. Have your air conditioning and heating systems serviced. Turn off lights when leaving a room.

Greater efficiency means fewer kilowatt-hours used. Know the amount of energy, measured in kilowatt-hours, your home requires per month. The fewer kilowatt-hours needed the less costly the solar energy system.

3. Solar Energy Production — Finally, we investigate the best solar power system for a particular home. Making an informed choice about solar home energy requires knowing how many kilowatt-hours your home uses. When we actually know how many kilowatts of energy own home requires, a solar professional can calculate the solar panels necessary for that much energy.

For example, in my area of Texas installed solar systems cost $8 – $10 a watt. That’s $8000 – $10,000 for a 1-kilowatt system. I would need approximately $48,000 to purchase a 6000-watt array.

But the recent passing of the Federal Incentives for Renewable and Efficiency would bring the price down to roughly $33,600. Depending on your own state’s policies, this number could be further reduced.

Also in my state of Texas, there is a Renewable Energy Systems Property Tax Exemption. This property tax code reduces my property tax by the amount the solar device increases my property value. I am not taxed on the increase on the increased property value attributed to the solar energy equipment.

Tax incentives and rebates differ from state to state. A local solar professional should be able to give you current tax incentive and rebate information applicable to your state. They can calculate your final costs after incentives and rebates for a solar electric system best for your home.

After conservation and efficiency measures, you may still consider getting a smaller solar array that would supply a portion of your energy needs. Put the money you save on your monthly energy bill toward the next array of solar panels. Keep adding more solar panels until you can create as much energy as your home uses.

Solar energy made right on our home rooftops sounds inviting. For nearly all Americans, solar energy is the renewable resource which integrates most easily into our home energy equation. With proper conservation and efficiency measures and current tax incentives, solar energy can be made affordable to more homeowners.

Sharp, the world’s number one solar cell producer, has just turned its hand to glass studded with LED lights and cells. Instead of generating enough electricity to run a home, it creates a psychedelic light show at night, powered entirely by the day’s sun: it’s more likely to feature in a photo shoot for Wallpaper* magazine than a Green Party newsletter. Tory leader David Cameron’s cool halo owes much to the solar panels he’s installing on his Notting Hill roof. And I can’t walk down the street wearing my solar backpack without being stopped by fascinated strangers, an experience Graham Hill of the American eco-blog treehugger.com knows well.

Learn How To Make Solar Panels

Gadgets like the backpack have certainly played a large part in solar’s image revival. Our appetite for consumer electronics of all sorts has grown hugely over the past few years, with sales totalling a record $135.4bn (£71.4bn) in the US alone last year. With so many gizmos to power, solar suddenly has new uses. When Will Gould, a gadget lover and TV script editor, set off to travel the world for a year, his first purchase was a solar charger for iPods and phones. “I didn’t know when I’d be near a plug socket,” he explains, “and, yes, there’s gadget lust: the Solio I bought has a beautiful flower-like, iPod white design”.

Once a distant technology that sat on roofs and was hard to understand, solar power has become a tool that we can hold in our hands. As John Laumer, a Treehugger contributor, puts it, “seeing is believing”. New gadgets increasingly have solar built-in. Recent outlandish additions include a solar-powered tent, scooter and LED house numbers, while mundane ones like bike lights, torches and radios have been around for years. “Solar bags” that charge anything smaller than a laptop have been particularly popular, and when the hip snow’n'surf brand O’Neill introduced one, it sold out. Even high street store Maplins now sells the Scotty, a relatively cheap (£35) solar charger.

Like other elements of the green revolution – such as furniture and fashion – design has been key. Adam Thacker, from Better Energy Systems,the Solio’s maker, says: “When we first looked at making a renewable-powered charger, it fast became apparent that most stuff was sold by making people feel guilty about their environmental impact. Design is so important. The iPod’s not the best MP3 player out there, but it’s caught people’s imagination because of the way it looks.”

Purchases inspired by design and hands-on experience have gone some way to demolishing ignorance about solar power. Contrary to popular myth, solar cells don’t need direct sunlight to produce electricity, and Britain’s actually quite well located for the sun. Sharp’s research says that if every single building in the UK was roofed with solar panels, we’d generate more than the UK’s present industrial and residential electricity consumption – there’d be no need for gas, nuclear, coal or even wind power.

Clearly, some of us are waking up to the benefits of making our own electricity at home. Solarcentury, a company promoting solar in the UK, has seen sales to its residential installers – the teams that fit solar panels on homes – double between 2005 and 2006. Donnachadh McCarthy, who offers “eco audits” from his solar-powered south London home, thinks the Cameron effect shouldn’t be ignored.

“He’s definitely made solar sexy. Lately, I’ve had several rich, naturally Tory, clients who want solar, and their genuine motivation is to reduce carbon emissions,” he says. “But there are a host of other reasons. One family was concerned about its lighting going off in the case of an energy emergency or oil crisis.”

There’s also a practical, very British reason for our interest in solar: money. With the average household’s electricity bill above £900 (and set to rise again with British Gas’s latest price rises), solar panels start to make sense at £4,000, after you’ve received a government grant available for installation. They can add value, too. When two new homes in Norfolk sold recently, the one with solar PV roof tiles by Solarcentury sold for 8.6% more than its neighbour. Energy efficiency ratings in next year’s home information packs, grants of up to £3,000 and imminent improved planning laws should help further.

Solar may suddenly be cool, but there are reasons for pause. The recent government energy review contained little concrete promotion of solar, and the scale of what’s been achieved can be overstated. As McCarthy points out, “only 100 solar PV installs have happened in London since 1999, so it’s perhaps a bit early to say it’s truly trendy.” Plus the price of fitting solar on your home is unlikely to drop soon, since silicon – the raw material in solar cells – is currently in high demand. Sharp, however, is working to keep prices down by slicing the silicon used in cells even thinner than today’s 180 microns.

Still, the forecast looks bright for solar. Cameron’s celebrity power shouldn’t be underestimated, our growing gadget energy use – expected to double by 2010 – should ensure cheap green alternatives’ success, and ethical living is in fashion. If you’re making fairtrade, organic and green choices in other areas of your life, solar’s the next obvious step. Besides, as the thronged parks and high streets of summer prove, we Brits love anything to do with the sun.

Kansieo.com

The following article explains in varying levels of detail; how a solar cell converts sunlight energy into free electrons, which is called the photoelectric effect and how, from the physical perspective, the use of silicon moves electrons through various states to produce useful solar generated electricity.

Albert Einstein won the Nobel Prize for discovering, documenting, and proving the Photoelectric effect. Funny as he has gathered most of his attention due to his work on relativity. Little did one know that the same people who helped us calculate everything under the sun is also the same person helping to bring renewable solar energy to the masses.

Solar Electricity and the Photoelectric Effect

The photoelectric effect is a key concept, since it is the way sunlight is converted into free electrons as light interacts with the solar cell. Without the creative work of Albert Einstein, the physical characteristics of sunlight might not be known. Never mind the impact and Earth-altering opportunities to power your home using solar generated electricity that his ideas inspired all these years later.

Think of sunlight not as a wave but as a beam of photon particles for the purposes of explain the technical details of how home solar energy systems work. These bundles of energy penetrate the silicon lattice structure inside the solar cells making up a home solar panel and transfer their energy to an electron in the outer layer of the silicon atom.

When a single electron gains enough energy from the penetrating photons, it breaks free and floats around the lattice structure, no longer bonded. An electron has a negative charge when it is knocked free during the photoelectric effect. The silicon atom that loses the electron, which had a neutral charge with the electron, now has a positive charge without it. Remember back to high school chemistry. Now, these high school chemistry and physics classes appear to have more relevancy as we learn about the photoelectric effect, silicon solar cells, and how home solar energy systems work. Who would have known?

When an electron is removed from this lattice structure or matrix in this fashion, it creates a hole in the outer layer of the lattice where the electron was. A nearby electron with a negative charge soon fills the hole. The electron that moves in has a positive charge. It can be described like the balancing of an equation; i.e. when one silicon electron consisting of a negative charge is transferred in…another particle, in this case an electron with a positive charge, is bumped out and moves out.

As photons of sunlight penetrate the silicon and knock electrons loose they transfer their energy. Electrons with negative charges are transferred into holes in the chemical structure of the silicon atom and into positive holes that appear once the electrons move out. Sort of confusing but it really is like two layers of Swiss cheese laid side by side. Holes, or bubbles, from in one layer and move over to fill the holes in the other layer. The total number of holes stays the same and every bubble makes a circular path from one side, where they are pushed out, to the other side where they are absorbed in. Something similar happens when electrons are forced out of and into silicon wafers. This photoelectric effect works because of the one-directional flow of positive and negative electrons. This flow of electrons produces the electrical current used in everyday use. The one way or single direction that the silicon electrons is produced when the sunlight, which is really photons of energy, repeatedly hit the silicon solar cells inside the PV panels making up the home solar power unit.

Incredibly enough, this process is the secret sauce that allows electricity to be produced from ordinary sunlight. It is Albert Einstein’s discovery, called the photoelectric effect, that makes solar electric energy possible. The average homeowner can now buy or rental home solar energy systems and generate useful electricity for their house.

The first thing you might ask – what is solar radiation and how does it related to solar generated electricity? A good question and one that is discussed in one of our article dedicated to home solar power. This article, on the other hand, explains how kilowatts are calculated based upon the energy output of your solar array. We will also highlight the difference between solar cells connected in parallel versus in series.

The average American home uses about 25 kWh of electricity per day. The following example illustrates how to calculate the power produced by a residential solar energy system. By consulting a solar radiation map, we find that a house receives 5 hours of direct solar radiation a day, averaged out throughout the year.

Solar radiation maps are highlighted on may websites throughout the Internet. You can do a quick search for “solar radiation” to find one. They essentially plot the amount of sunlight based upon time of year and physical location that will hit the United States in any given area.

Calculating the power from a solar energy system

Divide the average kWh per day by the average sun hours per day. For this example, we take 25 kWh divided by 5 hours of sun per day = 5 kW system This 5 kW system will generate 25 kWhs under optimal conditions in direct sunlight for 5 hours, or 25 kWh on an average day with some at peak production and most of the sunlight at less than optimal angles.

Future articles related to solar energy will continue to explain the effects of sun angle, reflection, and refraction on the design, output, and installation of solar panels.

Energy as it Pertains to Solar Modules

Individual solar modules that are measured in watts have a particular voltage (around 40 volts) and a particular amperage (around 5 amps). A solar module with 40 volts and 5 amps is called a 200-watt module, which means that it has the potential to produce 200 watts of electricity when in direct sunlight, away from trees or shading, and clear of snow or debris. Since most electrical components around your house are only rated for 600 volts DC, it is rare to see a solar array with a string larger the 15 solar modules. On the other hand, since inverters need a minimum voltage or pressure to turn them on, you will seldom have a solar array with a string solar modules with a size smaller then 6.

Electrical components, like solar cells, panel modules or batteries, can be connected in either series or parallel. This makes a big difference in the total quantities of energy produced from the solar energy system, as well as the stability of the technology over time. Each solar module or component has a positive and a negative pole. In essence, this is the same way batteries have their negative and positive poles arranged. Take a look at how you but batteries in a flashlight. Same idea here. The manner in which these poles are connected makes a big difference. Connect Solar Panels in Series

When you connect residential solar energy systems in series, you connect the positive (+) pole on one component to the negative (-) pole on the next. When modules are connected in series, the voltages are added. Adding voltage together in this fashion creates a long chain of solar modules all working together, depending upon each other, and creating a flow of current that increases along the length of the system.

These modules in series are called Strings. The average string is 8-12 modules so the voltage would be 320 – 480. Unfortunately, we encounter some negative aspects of of this type of construction.

Connecting Solar Panels in Parallel

When you connect solar panels or components in parallel, you connect the panels so current can travel to your inverter and to your house via multiple paths. Unlike adding solar modules in series which increases the volume of current as it goes, the solar panels connected in parallel has the effective of leaving the current or volume of electricity passing through the system the same.

Solar panels or strings of solar arrays tied together in parallel are called parallel systems. Their amps are combined together but the total voltage remains the same. Adding amps is like increasing the volume, the pressure stays the same but the volume goes up. Inverters can only handle so much volume so you will seldom see more than 1 to 3 strings in parallel; positive ends to positive ends with negative ends to negative ends.

One of the advantages of parallel connection is that electricity continues to flow, even though one of the components (or strings) is damaged. If a system is entirely in series, one damaged component stops the entire system. You may remember the ever-frustrating Christmas lights that were connected in series. Often difficult to trouble shoot, strings of lights connected in series are hard to fix when one bulb blew out. Now, the modern Christmas lights are connected in parallel. You can see this because there are two wires connecting each lamp. You can feel this via their less frustrating maintenance and operation.

Options for Residential Solar Energy Systems

In this article, we explained in some detail how solar modules calculate the power they produce as well as how connecting solar arrays in series or parallel can have an large impact on energy output as well as complexity of design. Our next article will cover how sun angle affects solar energy systems and how to quantify the solar power produced from the sun.

New solar energy system rentals allow you to upgrade your home to solar generated electricity with no large system to purchase. You can rent the solar energy equipment needed to generate up to 100 percent of your electricity needs. Exciting aspects related to clean, green solar energy are emerging all around us.

Richard Baxter asked:




Many people today have realized the dream of being completely off the grid by combining wind and solar energy. Small sized affordable wind generators are available today for the home user, and they are being combined with photovoltaic cells for power generation. It’s obvious that fossil fuel energy costs are going to keep on rising making it harder to afford getting power from the grid. The time is more than ripe for solar wind energy to be one of the solutions to rising energy costs, and to take us off of fossil fuel energy dependence.

Wind Turbines

Wind turbines are actually very simple machines. They consist of 3 parts: rotor blades, a shaft, and a generator. The rotor blades act like a propeller that turns the shaft when the wind flows through them. The shaft then turns the generator and a current is generated. About eighty-five percent of all off-grid systems use solar wind energy.

The new micro as well as mini wind turbines are very popular with sailors, and are now starting to be more popular with home owners in Europe and the UK. Mini turbines are very cost effective and will only cost about $1,500 to $2,500. They are perfect for generating electricity if you live off the grid in remote rural areas. It’s satisfying to think about having solar wind energy provide for all your energy needs and also knowing that you never have to depend on utility companies.

Photovoltaic Cells

The typical home solar power system consists mainly of these:

a)Photovoltaic Panels

b)Charge Controller Module

c)Batteries (optional)

d)Inverter

Photovoltaic panels convert sunlight into an electric current. The type of current generated by a photovoltaic panel array is DC or direct current. For this current to be usable in most common households, it has to be converted into AC or alternating current. That’s where the inverter comes in. It’s job is to convert DC into AC current.

Solar wind energy systems are also called hybrid energy systems because the use a combination of solar and wind power to generate electricity. The wind turbines are mostly used during the winter months (in the northern hemisphere) when the sun’s vertical rays are mostly directed toward the southern hemisphere, and days tend to be short and cloudy. During summer months, photovoltaic cells would supplement greatly along with the wind turbine.

By using hybrid solar wind energy systems, a homeowner has the option of using or omitting batteries for storage. Homeowners also have the choice of being “Grid-Tied” or “Net Metered”. This means that your solar wind energy system has the ability to provide electricity not only for your house, but the power company as well. This way, if your solar wind energy system generated more energy than was used, the energy can be sold back to the power company. When you’re selling energy back to the company, your power meter runs backward. The “net metered” system therefore is highly recommended. The grid also works as your “battery backup” when your hybrid solar wind energy system doesn’t provide for your power demands.

Net-metered systems are also recommended because they are easier to install, cost less, and offer better performance.



Website content

How do we use a Do It Yourself (DIY) home solar energy system to reduce our electricity bill? One of the major expenses of our homes is the electricity bill. We use electricity to power all our household appliances. Most electric power plants use either oil or coal to generate power. We know the supply of this material is limited therefore as housing development grows, the cost of electric power will increase as well. How do we shield ourselves from future rising cost of electricity? One option is to use a renewable energy source such as solar power.

The current challenge of using solar energy to power our homes is the high cost. If you were to engage a contractor to do the retrofitting, be prepared to invest a few thousand dollars. Many people would not be able to afford that. As an alternative, we can build our own homemade solar energy system via a DIY approach.

The idea of extracting the power from the sun ray is quite simple. We need to install an array of solar cells on the roof to collect the energy from the sun and convert it into electric power. The power from the sun is stored in rechargeable deep cycle batteries. Since most or our home electric components use AC current, we need an AC converter to change the DC power from the batteries into alternate current.

To reduce our household electricity bill is a matter of connecting our home appliances into the solar power system. The amount of power we can use from the system will depend on the size of the solar panels and also the number of batteries. If we were to aim for 10 percent energy cost reduction, the amount of money saved will be quite substantial after a few years.

Many people don’t realize that there are cheap alternative energy solutions for your home that you can implement and thus free yourself from the ever increasing energy costs. This is definitely the time to look into cheap alternative energy solutions as prices will continue to rise in the coming weeks and months. Saving hundreds of dollars every month is in everyone’s interest, and it’s time we sought ways to harness are energy for free.

1. Solar panels.

You are likely aware of using solar panels to power your home and the amazing way this energy solutions can eliminate huge bills. But, you have probably also been led to believe that solar panels are “too expensive”. This isn’t always the case and there are definitely cheap ways you can make your own panels. Even if you go online and dig a little you will find some of the big, discount stores sell very affordable and complete systems for a lot less than the you’d imagine. And of course the panels will have paid for themselves over a short time.

2. Solar Cooker.

This is basically a small box which requires no fuel to cook food in. You can buy solar cookers or you can make them yourself. You can boil, roast and bake your food in a solar cooker. You’ll be saving a ton of power and money cooking your meals from the sun in an energy efficient manner.

3. Solar Home Heating

Home heating can be a huge cost to fork out every month, but fortunately there are cheap alternative energy solutions. There are different methods for solar home heating, depending on the design of your house, as well as your wants, needs, and how much you want to spend as an upfront cost. There are also several do it yourself projects which are very cheap. For example people have been running pvc pipe through their yards as the sun easily heats it up and it runs into their home for hot water.

Solar energy is power generated from the heat of the sun. The sun illuminates and provides heat and warmth on the surface of the earth. Technologies that capture and store solar heat for an extended period of time can be applied to benefit homes, offices, and factories. They can transform solar energy to run devices that provides warmth and lighting during night time or during cloudy days.

You can make use of solar energy yourself by learning how. Solar energy as a resource is free. However, the cost of materials and equipment you need to tap that resource ranges from high to low, depending on what suits your needs. The good thing about it is that, unlike oil or gas heaters for which you pay every month, you spend less and less for energizing and heating your home with solar energy. Without ill effects on the environment, solar power can cool, heat and ventilate your home.

If you are thinking about having your own solar power for any particular use, it would be easier if you try to find a solar collector first. A solar collector is any material such as clear plastic or glass that can attract and capture the energy brought on by the heat of the sun in concentrated quantities. An example of a trapped or captured heat is when a car that has sat out in the warm sun all day has become exceedingly hot so that you need to open your windows in order to let the warm air escape from your seats and compartments and allowing the car to cool inside. A greenhouse is another example. It has the same effect as its glass or clear plastic walls and roof can attract the heat of the sun and trap it inside to keep the needed amount of heat for the plants to grow normally and efficiently.

Also, tapping solar energy for home use can offer you optimum benefits if you familiarize yourself about what an active and a passive home means. These are two types of solar homes which give homeowners choices on which part of the homes they want energized or what equipment they want run by solar power. Solar energy can be used to warm your home, heat your water, as well as generate electricity for lighting at night. Consequently, you will need to consider the cost which a particular type of solar home entails when you choose the type of solar home you want.

Passive homes do away with special facilities or materials for heating. They merely use their windows for maximized entry of sunlight. The sunlight gets stored by having the doors totally closed during the warmest hours of the day and keeping the heat trapped inside. In the evenings, thick curtains can be used on the windows to keep this heat concentrated inside the home. This allows the natural heat of the sun to warm your home without using any special or elaborate equipment and materials.

Active homes, on the other hand, use equipment such as blowers and pumps. Substitute heating sources also need to be used when the sunlight captured during daytime is not enough for the heat to circulate inside the house. Active homes use specially-designed boxes placed outside to attract sunlight and store the heat, thereby providing more supply of energy to heat the homes. These boxes heat water or air inside pipes and ductwork which in turn facilitate the circulation of heat inside the homes.

In the long term, solar energy is cost-effective. It can heat our homes without spending for artificially-generated heat. Solar energy does not harm the environment and can be found anytime and wherever the sun shines.

Did you know that 30% of an average home’s energy cost is due to heating water? And most of that hot water is never even used. What a tremendous waste of money and resources!

Solar water heaters provide the greatest amount of energy per dollar than any other solar product. And you don’t have to worry about running out of hot water, since most systems include a back-up system using gas or electricity.

They even make portable solar “showers” that are great for campers. Just fill them with water (they hold 4 gallons) put them in the sun, and in a couple of hours you’ve got about three hot showers.

These are very popular, and it’s easy to see why. For just a couple of hundred dollars you can raise your pool’s temperature by 10-15 degrees, adding months to the swimming season no matter where you live. Because they are so simple to install you can easily take them down during the coldest winter months.

Whether you want a birdbath fountain, a cascading fountain, or even a waterfall, solar powered fountains are a cost-effective way to beautify your garden or patio. Fountains are perfect for solar power because you don’t have to worry about electrical outlets, wiring, or power sources. Just put the fountain where you want it and enjoy!

There are many different kinds of solar lights you can buy, including garden lights, deck and patio lights, spot lights, step lights, and security lights. There are even solar Christmas lights!

These are some of the most popular home solar energy products you can buy today. People who use them say it feels great knowing they’re not wasting energy anymore–or money! After all, the sun is continually throwing off tremendous amounts of energy you can now harness. What are you waiting for?

As gas prices soar utility bills rise as well. Natural disasters are occurring more and more shutting down power for days or weeks. With alternative energy sources such as solar power and wind power you do not need to worry about such issues. Solar energy, power from the sun, is free and inexhaustible. Learn to set up house solar power today.

With the ever increasing costs of living there is no better time then right now to start producing our own electricity. Whether you want to simply reduce your power bills or completely eliminate them, it couldn’t be easier.

You will save hundreds of dollars a month… and thousands of dollars a year… for the rest of your life. Some people switching to solar power have been able to slash their electricity bill by 80% or more! Solar energy is also the cheapest way to generate renewable energy. You will be able to protect your pocket book during these recession times and spend money on more important things.

You will have a lot of fun in building your own power systems. You can do it with your close friends and family during a week-end and everyone will enjoy it.

The savings can typically pay for a solar system in one month’s time. Plus, the fuel is free, with no moving parts, the cells require little upkeep and because they burn no fuel and have no moving parts, solar systems are clean and silent. Another great reason to install a renewable energy system in your home is that you will increase the value of your home by thousands!

You will be able to go completely off-grid if you want, knowing that rising energy prices will not affect you. Also, you could possibly be able to make the electricity company pay you, because the surplus of what you produce will make the meter go the other way, in case you want to stay on-grid. What? Your probably wondering right now, but it’s true. Most electric companies utilize net metering, which means your electricity meter can run forwards and backwards. When you produce more power than you use at any given moment, the meter runs backwards as you send the excess back to the grid and effectively sell that power back to your power company. (They pay or credit you at exactly the same price per KWh they charge you). For the average customer this results in significant reductions in their electricity bill, though some generate more total power than they use and receive a payment from the electric company.

Most people are unaware that solar cells and wind power can be used to power up basically any appliance you have in your home: fridge, washing machine, computer, TVs, lights. While others wonder if solar energy really works. Ponder this…solar cells were originally developed for use in space, where repair is extremely expensive, if not impossible. To this day solar energy still powers nearly every satellite circling the earth because it operates reliably for long periods of time with virtually no maintenance.