Solar Power 4 Home

Solar power for homes (power4home ) is becoming an increasingly popular method of powering some or all of your house. However many people ask the question "How much does home solar cost?"

There are two main methods of getting your house up and running on solar power electricity. Simply put, they are either professional installation or "do it yourself" (DIY) solar panel installation.

As you'd expect, professional installation is by the most expensive method. A recent article in the UK suggested that the cost of professional installation could be anything from £3,000 to £20,000 (approx $5,000 - $40,000 US). The article in the Independent went on to suggest that professionally installed systems could take up to 100 years to pay back the installation costs. In other words, professionally installed systems are out of reach of most everyday people who want to have solar power for home.

Solar Panels

There are several varieties of solar panels available on the market. The most common is a third generation silicon crystal panel. These panels are efficient enough to pay for their purchase price in 5-7 years of power production. This means you are essentially getting three to eight years of free power in the engineered lifetime of a solar panel. A newly emerging technology is the thin film solar array. This new technology allows solar panels to be made utilizing much less material than is needed for traditional methods. While they are less efficient currently than the more established crystal arrays, they also don’t need to produce nearly as much power to meet their production costs.