Solar Power Costs - What Everyone Really Should Know


There are two main factors that govern solar power cost and they are quite simply, the assembly cost of the solar power panels and the installation cost of the solar system in your home.

Solar power panels may be efficient, eco-friendly and help to save our planet but until they can be competitive in the energy market place then they will never be extensively used. A new coal-burning plant can easily deliver electrical power at $2 per watt and so this is the benchmark figure that the solar experts want to match.

For the past 20 years scientists have been developing innovative and cheaper designs of solar power panels. It is the Silicone based solar photovoltaic panels which have dominated the industry and sell for about $3 a watt, however this is before installation.

For some time there was an actual scarcity of silicone and although the demand for solar panels was growing, the solar panel suppliers were not able to fulfill that demand. Today even though there is an ample supply of silicone, nevertheless the operation of refining it to make the semiconductors is a costly process and there are not too many companies that do this. The handful of factories that can produce this refined silicone have a monopoly on the supply meaning that even though the demand is high they still keep the price inflated.

The price of refined silicone is one of the main elements in the cost of solar panels. The key thrust of research going on today is in developing ways to reduce the quantity of silicone that is needed to produce a solar panel. There is also investigation taking place in using alternative cheaper materials which are equally effective. There are specific organic materials which have semiconductor properties which may be used rather than silicone.

The expense of installation will change quite dramatically depending on whether you do it yourself or if you call in an experienced installer. To install a solar power system in your own home using a professional installer will cost you between $10 - $12 per watt. If you install the solar system by yourself then it should probably cost you about $4 per watt.

While the initial expense of installation of a home solar energy system would still be relatively expensive there is no doubt that in the near future, given the astounding advancements that are happening, the cost will come down. In the mean time, government authorities all over the world are encouraging and subsidizing the use of this particular technology by offering tax rebates and credits for home owners who install solar energy systems.

So if you install your solar energy system by yourself at the cost of approximately $4 per watt and claim all the tax savings and credits that are offered in your area, then your solar power cost may not be so far from the $2 per watt benchmark of the electricity delivered by the coal-burning plant.

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