Is Solar power for my home worth the cost?

First you mention Solar Heating Panels and then Talk about producing electricity. Solar heating panels are not solar cells. They Do not produce Electricity.

They use either liquid or air to provide direct heating to your home, heat water or provide an assist to other heating methods such as a heat pump. Solar Heating Panels also come in Active (a pump or blower is used to move the medium through the panels) and passive ( the heat is what causes the medium to flow through the panel). Solar cells or panels produce electricity and to make them really viable you need a battery system for storage because the cells of course won't produce at night.As Far as Producing enough electricity to sell back to the Power Company.

One company sells 15 w panels for about $100 so to produce 1000 watts would take 67 panels. Running a household, assuming you have no electric powered heat, can use several thousand watts at a time, and running electric heat and cooling can boost that up considerably. There are less expensive versions of solar electric panels being researched but who knows when they well be commercially viable.

If you really want to produce electricity for your home I would look into wind power but no mater what you choose the batteries that are needed for the system to be really useful are not cheap either. Getting back to the solar heating panels they are relatively inexpensive and can really help lower your bill especially if you use them for both heating your home and heating your water. Provided of course you live in an area with sutible solar conditions.

In the U.S. The cost of installing of solar collecting systems, for hot water, to generate electricity, or to even sell some back to the grid is slowly coming down, and there are some tax breaks. But it is a major investment up front so the savings you'll get in a tax break will not off-set the expense. It will take many years for the cost to pay itself back in actual savings, but of course, once you actually go to the expense, you will have much lower energy bills.

If you were in Germany, you might as a matter of course have had solar collector panels on your roof for many years and have been selling back power. And though Germany isn't known as a particularly sunny climate, it has enough sunny or bright days all year to make it a viable method of powering homes in the nation. I attended the O.C. Tanner Symposium lectures at Utah State University in Logan, University in 2002 and there were several German scientists in attendance lecturing about how their system works.

Two of them were Jens Boesenberg and Hartmut Grassl. I think you'll find the future of solar power isn't remote or difficult, once a nation sets its mind to it. A book was produced based upon those lectures, including writing by Grassl, "a member of the Max-Planck-Institute für Meteorologie in Hamburg, Germany, who advocated for government support of global research on climate change." _The Search for a Common Language_ was produced in the effort to help scientists tell their story better for lay people and for poets and story tellers to build the science into their writing.

http://tinyurl.com/yexpcdk To bring this answer much closer to home, I would suggest you visit the folks at the 1BOG (1 Block Off of the Grid) site at http://1bog.org/. They work to round up enough people in any given narrow geographic area (such as a city block, as the name suggests) who want to put in solar collectors, then use this number of people in one area to negotiate much lower material and installation costs than you might get if you do this on your own. If you'd like to follow along on twitter, they are http://twitter.com/1bog You asked if it is worth the cost.

This probably depends on where you live. The cost of the improvement doesn't add that same value to the house, so you can't add on the cost of the solar panels to the appraised value and get it back if you turned around and sold it. But if I had the money to put into such a project, I would do it in a heartbeat.

The moral and ethical components of this decision would be the deciding factor for me, the ability to use the power instead of letting it bounce off of my roof, and to regulate my usage to fit the power available. It seems a sensible way to live, if you can do it. But in dollars and cents, you won't see enough savings this year or in 20 years if you pro-rate, to make it look like a bargain.

On a personal note, I'm glad I waded in to answer this question because I was incredibly impressed by Grassl's lecture and hadn't realized this book was produced until now. So I've just ordered it on Amazon. Thanks for asking, even if the answer gives you a lot more that you asked for!

:).

In my experience (we installed a Kyocera 3kwht system 2 years ago) getting solar PV electrical generating panels is well worth the cost and effort if you are thinking of the future of our planet, evironmental problems, saving money on electricity, being self-sufficient in the case of power outtages (at least during the day) and getting tax savings. If you have less money to spend, hot water heating solar panels are highly effective in reducing your energy bill (as a huge 80% of all energy is said to be used in heating water for a house). In the state of Hawaii, you can get a system installed for only around $2000 US or less after the tax breaks kick in.

Getting PV electricity generating panels on your home is a great investment but takes a bit longer to pay off. A standard 3kwht system costs between 20,000-25,000 USD depending on your state, but most states in the US and in some countries like Japan and the UK you can get back some of this cost in government incentive paybacks and tax benefits to cut the cost down to around 15,000 USD. When you are creating solar electricity from your panels that you are not using, it is being bought by the electricity company via the grid.In Japan this translates into monthly electrical statements that are two sided : left side is how much you pay (average between $30-50 with solar) and how much you get paid on the right side (low months in winter avg.

6,000 yen ($60) and high months avg 10,000 yen ($100)). There is a separate meter that calculates solar energy that is created installed with your system. I wish information like this was a bit easier to come by.

When I was in the market for a solar system, there was a lot of disinformation and negative opinions around but very little actual information available from easy sources like DIY centers like HomeDepot and housing stores like Sears in Hawaii- I hope this will change. In Japan, I was similarly discouraged from our DIY shops here by salespeople that really had no actual information but their opinions were negative, that it was too expensive. This is simply not the case when you actually do it yourself.

Don't get discouraged, it is worth it both financially and ethically- you will also be laughing when your solar system is already installed and the solar boom hits the mainstream when the oil reserves start getting dangerously low.

If you live at a sunny place go ahead with no account balance, it will pay you back. Even in high latitudes this is possible. You can use solar panels especific to heat water You can use solar panels especific to generate electricity There is a lot of germains and britains using tiles on the roof with fotoelectric cells on it generating surplusof energy and already selling back to the retail company.

Remember to check if the laws at your place permit it.

If you live in the US, the state or region you are in will provide different tax breaks along with different grants you can actually get to help pay for the solar cells themselves. You can view some of them here: dsireusa.org/ It can be very expensive up front to add a bunch of solar cells to your home but they do pay for themselves over a couple years (depending on location) and you may end up getting a credit from your power provider in high sun areas. Some great ways to get started in this area (and still get your tax break) are: Solar hot water heaters Solar Pool heaters Solar outside/garden lights These are fairly cheap and can get you a good credit without thousands up front.

According to my knowledge, it will be worth for your home you should consult some of the good site on solar power. I am providing you a site which I use for consulting on solar powers.

Here's Where you start: Identify your biggest home expense (besides mortgage). If you're like most people, it's heating, cooling and hot water. You can address all three by installing a ground source heat pump.

Ground source geothermal uses solar energy stored within 500 feet or so of the earths surface (in lakes and rivers as well). This low temperature heat is used in domestic and commercial application to drive a heat pump which either upgrades the heat for heating or dumps heat from a building for cooling and uses the earth as a heat sink. It is an entirely clean alternative to traditional heating with fuels or cooling with conventional electric air conditioners.

There is a higher up front cost to installing such a system due to the requirement of putting pipes in the ground (or water source) to pick up this free energy and make it available to the heat pump. Depending on available land or water, this may entail drilling, excavating, trenching or submerging in water. Drilling is the most expensive but on city lots as an example, there is no cheaper alternative.

However, even in a drilled geothermal application the efficiencies should be between 400 and 500% when properly designed so this cost is usually offset by the immediate savings in heating and cooling costs. Typical ROIs are between 3 to 10 years depending on the type of system it replaces, government grants available (these can be substantial- reaching $10,000) and other energy efficiencies(like insulation) that are incorporated . Because no fuel is burned, there are NO greenhouse gas emissions and NO ground contamination (in closed loop configurations).

For every unit of electrical energy used, the earth returns 5X that. Even higher efficiencies are possible in times when both heating and cooling are needed simultaneously. (As in summer air conditioning when the extracted heat can be used to heat a swimming pool, or preheat water for domestic use.

Efficiencies can top 800 %, meaning that for every unit of energy you pay for, the earth gives back 8 times that! If your electrical supply comes from a solar or wind or other green energy source, there are truly NO "hidden costs", and the higher and faster oil and gas prices rise, the more you'll be cheering from the sidelines because of the money you're saving. Also, you have the choice of having NO gas and the safety issues that come with it.

Ground source geothermal truly is the perfect heating and cooling technology and it is a proven one with hundreds of thousands of installations worldwide from the smallest house to whole neighborhoods. So get on board! Your house will also be more comfortable and have greatly increased resale value!

Environmentally, ethically and economically, there is nothing that comes close. You may be considering solar or wind but consider this: the sun doesn't shine 100% of the time and neither does the wind blow, but geothermal is 24/7. Also, for houses like mine that were never designed with solar in mind, it's not that economical.

Most importantly, we are on the cusp of a revolution in solar technology with the advent of thin film polymer cell photovoltaics. These will be printed on conventional printing presses and it will drive the cost of producing solar panels to a fraction of what they cost now. They will be wrapping above ground pipelines, windmills, cars; they will be integrated into shingles and siding.

Conventional silicon cell solar is very expensive and requires lots of batteries for storage (so do noisy wind turbines) and lots of roof and/or ground space to mount enough panels to address all your electrical energy needs let alone have any excess energy to sell. It's not as easy or feasible as you may have been lead to believe. Besides, your electrical energy use is usually not even close to your heating, cooling and hot water costs.In short, first replace the fossil fuels(gas, oil, propane) or straight electric heat you're using in your home (with a geothermal heat pump) and once that's paid off you will be in an ideal position for the new polymer cell solar to get yourself off the energy consumption grid entirely.

Solar is a good step, but not the complete answer for your energy needs. There are couple of questions you need to ask your yourself.. How much kilowatts do I use? This will determine how big a solar system you need.

Don't just install solar for the tax break, install them for an energy saviings. Second how long are you going to live in the home? If it is longer then 20 years..typically it takes about 20 years for the panels to return on their investement.So calculate the payback period and see if it pencils out.

Absolutely, solar power is worth the cost of installing it in your home. Here are some of the benefits of solar power: · Renewable · Non-polluting · Cost friendly · Low maintenance · Lasts a lifetime · Versatile · Provides energy independence Learn more about solar power at this website: Source: use-solar-power.com/solar-power-benefits....

I don't know where you live but in the uk if you have the initial capital (money) needs to put up the solar panels they pay for them selves in around 5 years sometimes as little as 2 or 3, there great and you no longer need to worry as much about your connection to the power company's. Think of them more as a long term investment and as it matures it will begin to pay you back a great long term strategy if you intent on living in the same house for the next ten or twenty years.

Make sure you Pat test all of the Electronic equipments first before you install those solar power energy to your house.

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.