Save Money on your Bay Area Home Solar System

 

There’s Never Been a Better Time to Go Solar.

There are currently a variety of federal and local solar tax incentives here in the Bay Area that can greatly reduce the cost of switching to solar power. In addition to the 30% federal tax credit, some cities in and around San Jose have additional incentive programs. There’s never been a better time to go solar.

Current incentive program types include:

• Federal solar tax credit of 30% (expires in 2016)
• Local city programs and solar incentives like the San Francisco Solar Energy Incentive Program could be available

O’Sullivan Green Solar is knowledgeable about Bay Area solar incentives and tax credits, and will outline the ones that apply to you in our initial proposal.

Facts About Solar Energy

• The global warming debate has really focused our minds on the need for us all to do our bit in reducing green house gases
• Today with modern solar technology we can start producing our own power right on our roof tops.
• Your solar powered home will produce the most energy when you use the most power; that is on hot summer afternoons.
• In the USA and other countries there are significant grants for installing a home solar power system.
• The best news of all is that one day your solar power station will save you money.
• O’Sullivan Green Solar will show you how you can save money by installing a solar power station on your roof.

Fact 1. Solar PV Panels Convert Sunlight Into Electrical Power

When sunlight strikes a solar cell in solar panels, it is converted into electrical power. Currently, the best residential solar panels convert about 14% to 16 % of the light that strikes them into solar energy. It is estimated that there is about 1000 watts of light power per 10.5 square feet. In practice it takes about 100 square feet to generate 1 KW of power per hour.

An average non-energy efficient family home uses about 33 KW hours per day or 1000 KW hours per month.

There are between 5 to 7 hours of sunlight per day in North America. That means you are producing maximum energy output for 5 to 7 hours per day.

To figure out how many square feet you need to produce 33 kw hours you divide you daily use by the number of sun hours.

33/5.5 = 6 kw per hour.

This means you need 6 x 100 = 600 Square feet.

So you need about 600 square feet of solar panels to generate the daily power requirements for an average family home.

 

Fact 2. The Cost Of Energy Is Set To Go Up

Guess what, the price you pay for electricity each year is probably going to go up. In the U.S. and everywhere else in the world it is the same. There are three ways electricity gets produced.

Nuclear, Fossil Fuels (Oil, Gas & Coal) and Hydro Electric (using water in dams).

Think about each of these. There is only one way. And that’s up. If the price of electricity goes up by 5% a year, then after 14 year it will cost twice as much.

If it goes up by 6.7% per year, which it has done in California for the last 30 years, the cost of electricity will double in just under 11 years.

Is nuclear power going to get more expensive or less expensive? The cost of uranium ore has tripled in the last 5 years. The cost of storing nuclear waste for 1000 years is going to be billions. All of which gets passed on to you.

For coal, oil and gas, we should not be burning these. They increase green house gases greatly. There are technologies on the drawing board that will capture green house gases, but that is only going to increase the price for you.

You can bet there is going to be a carbon trading scheme in the next few years. This means companies that generate lots of greenhouse gases using coal are going to pay for extra carbon credits. The cost of this will be passed on to you.

For Hydro Electric power, our water supplies have never been more precious. We will need to water to drink.

 

Fact 3. Most Utility Companies Give You A Credit For The Power You Produce

The good news is that today for every kilowatt of energy you produce, your Bay Area utility company will deduct that usage from your power bill. This is called net metering.

If you produce all the energy you need through solar power, you save the money that you were going to pay the power company.

Now here is what’s really interesting. If you are on Time of Use contracts, then on hot summer afternoons you will be getting a net-metering credit of about 20c per kw hour in summer.

 

Fact 4. Roof Top Solar Power Systems Make A Huge Difference.

Many of our larger cities have more than 2 million people. If there is 1 rooftop for every 4 people, that’s about 500,000 rooftops.

If just 1 in 5 homes has a roof top solar power station with a 6 kw system it would produce 500 mega (million) watts (MW) of power per hour on peak hot sunny days.

That’s a lot of solar power by anyone’s standards.

That’s 100,000 homes producing 5 kw of (AC) power per hour.

That’s 500 mw that was created out of thin air! It was not there before but now it is.

Even if only 1 in 10 roof tops had solar panels, that’s still 250 MW of power the power grid call on a hot sunny day.

It saves tens of thousands of tons of green house gases every year for 30 years.

 

Fact 5. You Can Make A Difference