Buy Solar Cells: Be Your Own Power Plant and Get Rid Of Your Electricity Bills

February 7, 2008 By Matthew Paulson

If you live in a larger home, chances are you’re paying quite the sum on a monthly basis to keep the current flowing to your home. In some parts of the country, it’s not uncommon to pay $100 a month just for electricity for a decent sized home and that price isn’t likely to go down any time soon with increasing demands on the world’s dwindling oil supply and relatively little investment into developing new forms of sustainable energy. We feel the squeeze at the gas pump every week, and eventually we’re going to start feeling it in our homes and businesses as well.

Fortunately there are proactive means that you can take in order to substantially reduce or potentially eliminate your energy bills at home. You probably know most of the basic tips such as insulating your home better and using energy smart appliances, but there’s only so much work we can do to reduce energy consumption in our homes. In addition to being smarter about our existing energy usage, we can create our own energy and feed it into the grid which will eliminate your power bill in many cases, and sometimes you’ll receive a monthly check from your power company.

Many companies are now offering what are called “zero” homes. These are homes that are designed to be extremely energy efficient from the beginning, and there’s never a utility bill you pay in your life. The extra cost is earned back within a few years. The technology has a lot to do with how the contractors build the homes on the lots, how they insulate it, what type of windows they use, and what appliances are used. They also add sophisticated energy panels to the roof of the home which generate electricity to power the home, and then any unused electricity is sold back to the power company. There are all sorts of incentives in all 50 states to build these types of energy efficient homes, which often come in the form of tax credits.
If you’re going to own your home for a long period of time, you can save a substantial amount of money by making an upfront investment to turn your home into a power-plant.

If you are happy with the home you’re in and don’t plan on building any time soon, but would like to add solar panels to your existing home, this can still be done and you’ll receive all of the same great incentives for doing so. It would likely cost between $10,000 and $15,000 to outfit your home with enough solar panels to power your home. The amount of time it would take for the system to pay for it will depend on how much energy your home uses, what type of solar cells you buy, what extra equipment you need, how much sun your home gets, and the like. It won’t be an over-night return, buy within a decade or so, your system will likely pay for itself. You’ll also have the benefit of owning something environmentally beneficial.

Turning your home into a power plant via solar cells isn’t the best investment in the world right now, but it’s becoming a lot more economically viable and will save you quite a bit of money over an extended period of time.

Posted in environment

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