Solar Power Costs - What Everybody Will Need To Know

There are two important factors that govern solar power cost and these are quite simply, the assembly cost of the solar panels and the installment cost of the solar system in your home.

Solar power panels may well be efficient, eco-friendly and also help to save the planet but until they can compete in the energy marketplace then they will never be extensively used. A new coal-burning plant can deliver electrical power at $2 per watt and making this the benchmark figure that the solar scientists want to match.

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

For some time there was a real shortage of silicone and although the demand for solar panels was growing, the solar panel producers were not able to fulfill that demand. Now even though there is a plentiful supply of silicone, nevertheless the process of refining it to produce the semiconductors is a costly process and there are not too many companies that do this. The few factories that can manufacture this refined silicone have a monopoly on the supply which means that even though the demand is high they can keep the price inflated.

The actual price of refined silicone is one of the main elements in the cost of solar panels. The main thrust of research going on today is in improving ways to reduce the amount of silicone that is needed to produce a solar panel. There is also research taking place with alternative cheaper materials which are equally efficient. There are specific organic materials that have semiconductor properties which may be used instead of silicone.

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

While the initial expense of installation of a home solar power system would still be relatively expensive it is inevitable that in the near future, given the amazing advancements that are taking place, the price will come down. In the mean time, government authorities around the world are encouraging and subsidizing the use of this particular technology by giving tax rebates and incentives for home owners who install solar power systems.

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

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