Insights Into Solar Power Costs

There are 2 important factors that govern solar power cost and these are quite simply, the production cost of the solar panels and the installment cost of the solar system in the home.

Solar panels may be green, eco-friendly and also help to save the planet but unless they can compete in the energy marketplace they will never be widely used. A new coal-burning plant can easily deliver electricity at $2 per watt and making this the benchmark figure that the solar scientists are trying to match.

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

For a while there was a real shortage of silicone and although the interest in solar panels was increasing, the solar panel suppliers were not able to meet that demand. Now even though there is a plentiful supply of silicone, still the process of refining it to produce the semiconductors is a costly process and there are not many facilities that do this. The handful of factories that are able to manufacture this refined silicone have a monopoly on the supply which means that while the demand is high they can keep the price inflated.

The actual price of refined silicone is one of the key factors in the cost of solar panels. The key thrust of research taking place today is in improving ways to reduce the amount of silicone that is required to produce a solar panel. There is also research taking place with alternative less expensive materials that are equally effective. There are certain organic materials that have semiconductor properties which may be used instead of silicone.

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

Whilst the initial cost of installation of a home solar energy system would still be fairly expensive it is inevitable that in the near future, given the amazing developments that are taking place, the price should come down. In the mean time, governments all over the world are encouraging and subsidizing the use of this technology by giving tax rebates and incentives for homeowners who install solar power systems.

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

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