YES!!! It's about time that someone, somewhere found a way to maybe develop CHEAP solar panels! Now us folk who pay outragous electricity bills can finally, maybe, hopefully get off this stupid energy grid and start producing our own, cheap, clean energy. *Dad is a happy, happy man! Full article here
a) what are the initial investment costs of them? b) youd have to stay in your home a long while to make them pay off unless they are removeable or cheap as chips c) they must make them avaliable to the consumer! There are VERY VERY few environmentally based products like this currently avaliable.
a- Well, they're saying that it'll be about $0.20 per watt, so a nice 10kw set of panels would be about $2,000. Figure another $3k for batteries, inverters and transfer switches and that's a total cost of $5,000. Now, a bit of that would be tax-deductable on both the state and federal levels (I'm in the US) bringing the cost down. In addition to the tax incentives, there would be grant assistance monies from both the government and local utility company to cut it down more. b- In my case, I own a house and don't plan on moving anytime soon. Plus having a full solar-panel array would dramatically raise the value of the house If the total cost of the system were $5k and you spend $75 a month in electrical costs, the system would pay for itself in about 5.5 years. That's without tax breaks or grant monies. c- From what I've read, they do plan on making this technology available to the consumer.
My mum has a solar panel on the side of the house which is used to heat our water. I think it saves quite a bit of money now that we don't use the electric shower but the initial cost and installation cost must have been quite a lot. How much would these solar panels save on normal electricity usage though? I doubt you could power a whole house even if the entire roof was one big solar panel. Not in the UK at least...
