Solar Power Costs - What Everybody Really Should Be Aware Of

There are two important factors which govern solar power cost and they are quite simply, the production cost of the solar power panels and the installment cost of the solar system in your home.

Solar panels may be efficient, eco-friendly and also help save our planet but unless they can be competitive in the energy marketplace then they will never be widely used. A new coal-burning plant can easily deliver electrical power at $2 per watt and making this the benchmark number that the solar experts are trying to match.

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

For a while there was an actual shortage of silicone and although the demand for solar panels was increasing, the solar panel suppliers were not able to fulfill that demand. Now although there is an ample supply of silicone, still the operation of refining it to produce the semiconductors is a costly process and there are not too many facilities that do this. The handful of factories that can manufacture this refined silicone have a monopoly on the supplies meaning that while the demand is high they still keep the price inflated.

The actual price of refined silicone is one of the main factors in the cost of solar panels. The key thrust of research going on today is in improving ways to lower the quantity of silicone that is required to produce a solar panel. There is also investigation taking place with alternative cheaper materials that are equally effective. There are specific organic materials that have semiconductor properties which can be used rather than silicone.

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

While the initial cost of installation of a home solar energy system would still be relatively expensive it is inevitable that soon, given the astounding developments that are happening, the price will come down. In the mean time, governments all over the world are encouraging and subsidizing the use of this particular technology by giving tax savings and credits for homeowners who install solar energy systems.

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

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Solar Power Costs - What Everybody Really Should Be Aware Of

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