Information You Should Grasp About Solar Power Costs

There are 2 main factors that govern solar power cost and these are quite simply, the production cost of the solar panels and the installment cost of the solar system in the home.

Solar panels may well be green, eco-friendly and help to save the planet but unless they can compete in the energy marketplace they will never be widely used. A new coal-burning plant can deliver electricity at $2 per watt and so this is the benchmark figure that the solar scientists are trying to match.

For the last twenty years scientists have been developing ingenious and cheaper designs of solar panels. It is the Silicone based photovoltaic panels that have dominated the industry and sell for about $3 a watt, but this is before installation.

For a while there was a real shortage of silicone and although the interest in solar panels was increasing, the solar panel producers were not able to meet that demand. Today even though there is a plentiful supply of silicone, still the process of refining it to produce the semiconductors is a costly process and there are not many facilities that do this. The few factories that are able to produce this refined silicone have a monopoly on the supply which means that while the demand is high they can keep the price inflated.

The actual price of refined silicone is one of the key factors in the cost of solar panels. The main thrust of research taking place today is in developing ways to reduce the amount of silicone that is required to produce a solar panel. There is also research taking place with alternative less expensive materials that are equally efficient. There are certain organic materials which have semiconductor properties which may be used instead of silicone.

The cost of installation will vary quite considerably depending on whether you do it by yourself or if you call in a professional installer. To install a solar powered system in your home using a professional installer will cost you between $10 - $12 per watt. If you install the system yourself then it will most likely cost you about $4 per watt.

Whilst the initial cost of installation of a home solar power system would still be fairly expensive there is no doubt that in the near future, given the amazing developments that are taking place, the price should come down. In the mean time, governments around the world are encouraging and subsidizing the use of this technology by offering tax rebates and incentives for homeowners who install solar power systems.

Therefore if you set up your solar power system yourself at the cost of about $4 per watt and claim all the tax rebates and incentives that are available in the area, then your solar power cost may not be so far from the $2 per watt standard of the energy delivered by the coal-burning plant.

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