Save Money With Solar Power at Home

Did you know that building your own solar power home system is a great way you can save money on your energy bills? It'll also reduce your dependency on dwindling fossil fuels so you'll also be doing your bit for the environment.

All it takes is a small initial investment and the right information. By using a guide to home renewable energy or assembling a solar kit, you could start generating your own solar power at home from as little as $300 or less and the solar panels you build will have a performance comparable to the retail units available today.

However, the first thing you need to check is whether or not there is enough sun for solar power. Home features such as a large roof or wall sidings help with mounting the solar panels, but the main thing you should check is to see if your house gets a generous amount of sun all day. There should not be any features like large trees or buildings obscuring sunlight during the day. If your roof doesn't get enough sun, you could mount them in your back yard.

A retail system, professionally installed could cost upwards of $20,000. Assuming a saving of $1000 every year, this would take you 20 years before you recovered the cost of the initial investment and this expense makes these retail units unfeasible for domestic use. If you built your own cells for generating solar power at home, you could start with an initial investment of about $300 and recover that in a matter of months.

Should you opt for assembling a solar kit, then be aware that the prices for the same kit can vary a lot depending on the supplier. Shop around for the best deals. A budget of $300-500 should allow you to buy all the components you need of reasonable quality. Avoid buying components that are too cheap because that's what you'll get, a cheap set of components that will make maintenance of your home solar panels difficult. What matters is reliability and cost-effectiveness, so having a panel that is simple and works most of the time is better than a more efficient one that keeps breaking down.

Another important factor is getting the right information. Read the blueprint and the instructions carefully before you begin. Project plan it by making a list of components. If your guide's a good one, the components should be easily available from local hardware stores. There may be one or two specialized components that might have to be ordered, but these should not be expensive. If your guide comes with videos, so much the better, as it is far quicker to learn from a video when someone is showing your what to do than from a text manual.

Your solar panels will generate electricity throughout their lifetime, measured in years. So if you keep building one every now and again you will gradually amass an array of solar cells that will enable you to save at least 80% of your electricity bill, or even supplement it altogether. Surplus energy can be sold back to the power grid.

This is perhaps the best time to start generating your own solar power at home. Components and knowledge to do this is now cheap and technology has advanced enough to put this within reach of the homeowner.