DIY Solar Panels World

Solar Energy Panels – What You Need To Know Before Purchasing

As you shop around for solar energy panels, there may perhaps be that occasional doubt about its benefits. Many consumers have similar experience. At some point in time, they take the leap of faith to supplement their household energy requirement with solar energy. As a result, their utility bills decreased dramatically. Most are delighted to sell their extra supply of electricity back to the grid.

As energy cost increase over the last decade, more and more homes are installing solar panels on their property. Although it takes some upfront investment to own solar panels, they really pay for themselves after some time.

Theoretically, it takes about 12 years for you to make back your investment in solar panels. But many states are now offering rebates, so the final cost of your investment is really much lesser than it seems to be. Rebates vary from state to state, so be sure to check out what you’re entitled for. The government also offers other incentives to encourage you to use renewable energy for your home.

Over the past 30 years, the price of solar panels have fallen to only 10% of what it used to be. It was practically impossible for folks to get a good return on their investment in the past without very high solar exposure on their property.

However, solar panels are much more efficient than they used to be. Therefore they also generate much more power than before and they need minimal maintenance. Best of all, these maintenance can be done by yourself with very little time. Modern solar cells are also much lighter and compact. Thus they can be installed on your roof with little modifications to its structure. As solar cells become more reasonably priced, adding solar power to your home is a brilliant, long-term solution to expensive utility bills.

But before you go shopping for a solar energy panel, there are a few basics you need to find out. These will help determine what types of solar energy panels you’ll require:

1. Know Your Energy Consumption. You need to know how much power you consume – the average, the highs and lows. This information helps you size up your system so you can figure out how many panels you need and what design is most suitable for you.

2. Find Out How Many Sun Hours You Receive At Your Location. This is obvious, but even the most efficient photovoltaic panels cannot generate enough power if there is insufficient sunlight. It would be impractical and costly to pay for gigantic solar energy systems that produce trickles of power.

3. Decide Whether You’ll Be Going Off-Grid. On-grid and off-grid systems have their own advantages and disadvantages. Most homes will stay on the grid because they can tap extra power (especially during winters) when they need to and when they generate additional power, they can sell it back to the grid. If you’re located in a remote region, going off-grid may be practical. You’ll thus need a storage system such as a battery bank to store energy so you can use during the night.

4. Find Out The Rebates And Incentives Available To You In Your State. This is important as it helps you find out the true cost of your solar generator. This may be an important factor that helps you decide if using solar energy is worth it after all.

Continue Reading At:

1. Benefits Of Using Residential Solar Panels There are two major benefits to using residential solar panels. First, you can reduce pollution as you rely less on the burning of fossil fuel. Second, you can get a very good return on investment on your photovoltaic panels — these are always double digit...
2. Sizing Your Solar Energy Panels – Part 2 Image via Wikipedia After you know where most of your household energy goes to, you are now ready to plan for your system size. For grid-tied system (without batteries and charge controllers), you only need to make sure the inverter you use is large enough...
3. Sizing Your Solar Energy Panels – Part 3 Image via Wikipedia This is the third and final part of the “Sizing Your Solar Energy Panels” series. Have you done some calculations for your future solar power system yet? If you have been doing those mini exercises, you’ll most likely find a suitable solar...
4. Why Are Solar Panels The Best Investment For Your Home? Electricity produced by solar panels used to be the most expensive option. However with government and large institutions investing into this technology, economies of scale caused the price of solar panels to come down over time....
5. How To Determine The Payback For Your Solar Panel Investment (Part 1 of 3) Buying (or making) solar panels is an investment you make toward a better future. For every investment you make, you have to find out the risks involved and its potential payback....
6. How To Determine The Payback For Your Solar Panel Investment (Part 2 of 3) The payback for your solar panel investment is the amount of time needed (in years) for your investment to pay for itself (break-even). A simple calculation gives you a clear picture:...
7. How To Determine The Payback For Your Solar Panel Investment (Part 3 of 3) The payback for your solar panel investment doesn’t stop at monthly utility savings. When you have a solar generator on your roof, property valuators will take that into consideration....