Solar Energy Simplified

By David Belden

It’s easy to get caught up in all of the technical terms when it comes to solar energy, so I wanted to take a step back and try to explain it in very plain English, as simply as possible.  Here goes.

There are two main ways to use solar energy in your home:
1. Heating water – either for a pool or for showers. (pictured on the right)
2. Creating electricity to power your home & appliances. (pictured on the left)

When you use the sun’s rays to heat water it’s called “solar thermal”.  Solar thermal technology has been around for 20 or 30 years and initially became popular as a way to heat pools.  Now it’s also used to heat water for general household use – showers, kitchen faucet hot water, etc.   In the case of solar thermal, panels with small pipes through them go up on your roof, and water is pumped through the pipes.  The sun heats up the water which is then stored in your hot water tank until you need it. (ie. Until you turn on the shower)  

Our expertise does not lie in solar hot water heating, so unfortunately I can not give ballpark figures for cost and payback periods. 

The second way to use the sun’s rays is to use solar panels to create electricity.  In this case solar panels are put on your roof and when the suns rays hit them they create electricity that you can use to power your appliances and home.  It’s that simple.   The sun’s rays hits the panels, that creates electricity, and the electricity powers your house. 

The average system cost is about $20,000 and pays for itself in 8-15 years.  That means that if you pay $20,000 today, you’ll have recouped your payment in saved money from energy bills in 8-10 years.  However solar energy systems last for 20-30 years, so you’ll send up saving much more money over the life of the system than it cost. 

You could spend $20,000 on a solar energy system today, and by effectively pre-paying for your energy for the next 20-30 years you’ll be saving $40,000 - $60,000 on energy costs over the next $20-30 years. 

There’s also quite a bit of talk about tax credits, rebates, and incentives.  All of those are just ways for government to help you pick up the tab for a solar energy system.  At least in California your installer will actually handle off of the paperwork for the rebates for you and they’ll even just reduce the price by whatever the rebate amount is.  That means you don’t have to deal with the paperwork and you won’t have to wait to get paid back by the government.  If a system has a list price of $40,000 the installer would deduct the various local and state rebates (~20% or $8k in this case) then they’d deduct the Federal tax credit from the remainder (30% = $9.6K) so you’d actually only have to pay $40k-$8k-$9.6k = $22.4K, down from $40k. 

Hopefully that helps make it clear how solar works, why it makes financial sense, and what it costs. That said, there are many factors that can effect the cost of putting solar on your roof. That is why we encourage you to talk to a solar expert to find out the exact cost and all the incentives and rebates that are available. To get started, simply fill out our free evaluation form and we will have solar experts contact you to discuss your options and get you on the road to going solar.