Have you ever driven by a house and saw that the top of the roof is covered with solar panels? Do you have any idea how much this family saves electricity bills; quite a lot. And there's no reason you cannot do this to.
Previously in the last decade the return on investment for installing solar panels was not necessarily a worthy cause. It might cost over $80,000 to outfit a whole house with enough solar panels to run all electric appliances inside such as refrigerators, air-conditioning and hot water heaters. But this is not the case anymore as the costs have come down somewhat.
Today you can install in the average size home for about $40,000 enough solar panels to run everything. And in some parts of our country and some regions with the natural gas prices so very high it now makes sense based on the return on investment for installing solar panels. You see it makes a lot of sense in that you will have no more electricity bills or natural gas bills.
Some of the homes today with solar power can make enough electricity to sell some of electricity back to the grid and therefore even if it is a cloudy week and you do not make that much electricity it is okay because rest of a month did and so electricity you have taken back averages out. Have you looked into the new solar technologies of today? If you have indeed it makes sense honestly consider such an investment in your family's home. So consider all this and contemplate in 2009.
6 Comments on Solar Power Panels on the Roof of Your Home?
I believe that more people would consider solar panels if the cost was a little more reasonable! (I could buy a really nice car with that type of money!)
I do think that, this is the way the official agencies would like to keep it. Do you know how many people would be out of jobs or how much tax revenue would be lost if we didn't have to pay the electric company or the gas company or the water company? Etc.
Why doesn't the housing industry use solar panels when building a home?
Why don't we harvest more wind power? The wind mills mesmerize me!
How come it has taken so long to get decent hybrid cars on the market?
Why are the homes built in So Cal with out much insulation, if any at all?
What about water power? Is there a reason why the recycled gray water isn't put to use when building these new homes to water the lawns or gardens to grow our own food?
Why do people adopt children from foreign countries when we have needy children here in the US?
Why do we send our excess food overseas when we having starving people in our own country?
Why, why , why? POLITICS!
I guess I don't just understand it yet but I wish you a Happy New Year just the same!
Hope all is well, I am quite familiar with Calabasas, and have done a considerable amount of business throughout the San Fernando Valley and up in the nicer sections of Calabasas, Woodland Hills, Agoura Hills, Westlake Village and Thousand Oaks too. Simi Valley has sure grown and Moorpark - Wow!
You ask: "Do you know how many people would be out of jobs or how much tax revenue would be lost if we didn't have to pay the electric company or the gas company or the water company?"
Well these of course are Utility Companies regulated by the government and are not actually government agencies at all as you know, they appear to be quasi-government agencies like the USPS or IRS, but the Water, Power, Gas companies are not. If they had to compete, they would become more efficient and perhaps make more money and perhaps they might lay off some folks, but efficiency and competition would lower prices.
California, botched the deregulation of energy pretty badly, due to stupidity in my opinion, at least that is the view at our Online Think Tank. De-regulation has done wonders for other industries; Airlines, Shipping, Trucking for instance - it has lowered prices, protectionism and regulation amounts to what Adam Smith warned us about. Ayn Rand is right on that account as well, and the author of Das Capital was dead wrong, I think Milton Friedman would stand by me on this.
In your second question you ask; "Why doesn't the housing industry use solar panels when building a home?"
This was a huge topic in "Building Industry News" magazine for a good nine months at the top of the bubble. The reason as stated is because putting solar panels on the home raised the price of the home some $30,000 minimum. It also increased liability for major builders, with all the lawsuits housing developers set up shell corporations that they close as soon if not right before the final home is built, this prevents class action lawsuits.
Even adding $1500 worth of insulation or a better fitting door or $3,000 for double pained windows was not done, this saves $1,000s per year on energy bills. The reason for that as stated is because raising the price of the homes an extra $3,000 means some folks would not qualify for the low or no-down financing. In hindsight, well obviously many of these folks had no business buying a home at all. They could not even buy a $1,400 chicken coup for cash, and yet they were sold homes for $250,000 to $450,000 with no money down, marginal credit and questionable statements on their loan application forms. But, I need not tell you this, more of an education for others reading this.
Solar Panels make sense, make what you can, when you are not using it, "grid bank" it selling it back to the grid allowing your electric meter to run backwards, everyone wins, no need to worry about capacity in power lines for demand and on hot days it helps prevent brown and rolling blackouts due to high usage from air-conditioners.
Now then certainly, the developers and builders of new housing tracts could have done this and their economies of scale would have fostered new innovation, research and free-enterprise would have filled in all the blanks and lowered the cost, it was a great time for that opportunity, which is gone now. Our Online Think Tank; http://www.worldthinktank.net/ discussed this at length during the run up to the bubble pop. You are preaching to the choir of course, but those are the arguments and debate points on that topic. - Lance
In order to allow everyone else to get the full benefit from all this, I am going to make all your questions into Blog posts and you can read them that way, I think it will help and you are a superstar of humanity to bring these points up, I really mean that, we need this dialogue so badly. = Lance
Thanks, I have completed and made them into 5-different Blog Topics, I totally agree that Brenda is right in asking these tough questions, as it is time to ditch the excuses of the status quo and move our homes and civilization forward - Lance
Mr. Winslow uses the Active Rain Real Estate Industry Blog, to discuss issues that affect the Real Estate sector of our economy. His dialogues include such things as; droughts, subprime lending fallout, building materials, living off the grid, sales ethics, commercial property, crime, revitalizing downtowns, economic development, community volunteerism, and predicting the future of the real estate markets in the United States.
Lance Winslow
I believe that more people would consider solar panels if the cost was a little more reasonable! (I could buy a really nice car with that type of money!)
I do think that, this is the way the official agencies would like to keep it. Do you know how many people would be out of jobs or how much tax revenue would be lost if we didn't have to pay the electric company or the gas company or the water company? Etc.
Why doesn't the housing industry use solar panels when building a home?
Why don't we harvest more wind power? The wind mills mesmerize me!
How come it has taken so long to get decent hybrid cars on the market?
Why are the homes built in So Cal with out much insulation, if any at all?
What about water power? Is there a reason why the recycled gray water isn't put to use when building these new homes to water the lawns or gardens to grow our own food?
Why do people adopt children from foreign countries when we have needy children here in the US?
Why do we send our excess food overseas when we having starving people in our own country?
Why, why , why? POLITICS!
I guess I don't just understand it yet but I wish you a Happy New Year just the same!