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Solar Power Costs - What Everyone Will Need To Know
There are 2 main factors that govern solar power cost and these are quite simply, the assembly cost of the solar power panels and the installation cost of the solar system in your home.
Solar power panels may be green, eco-friendly and help to save the planet but until they can be competitive in the energy marketplace then they will never be widely used. A new coal-burning plant can deliver electricity at $2 per watt and so this is the benchmark number that the solar scientists are trying to match.
For the last 20 years scientists have been developing ingenious and cheaper designs of solar power panels. It is the Silicone based photovoltaic panels that have dominated the industry and they sell for approximately $3 a watt, however this is before installation.
For some time there was a real scarcity of silicone and although the demand for solar panels was growing, the solar panel suppliers were not able to fulfill that demand. Now although there is a plentiful supply of silicone, nevertheless the operation 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 can produce this refined silicone have a monopoly on the supply which means that even though the demand is high they still keep the price inflated.
The price of refined silicone is one of the key factors in the cost of solar panels. The main thrust of research taking place today is in developing ways to reduce the quantity of silicone that is required to produce a solar panel. There is also research taking place in using alternative less expensive materials that are equally efficient. There are specific organic materials that have semiconductor properties which may be used rather than silicone.
The expense of installation will vary quite dramatically depending on whether you do it yourself or if you call in a professional installer. To install a solar powered system in your home using a professional installer will cost you between $10 - $12 per watt. If you install the solar system yourself then it will probably cost you about $4 per watt.
While the initial expense of installation of a home solar power system would still be fairly expensive there is no doubt that in the near future, given the astounding developments that are happening, the cost will come down. In the mean time, government authorities all over the world are encouraging and subsidizing the use of this particular technology by giving tax rebates and credits for homeowners who install solar power systems.
So if you install your solar energy system yourself at the cost of about $4 per watt and claim all of the tax rebates and incentives that are offered in your area, then your solar power cost may not be so far from the $2 per watt standard of the electricity delivered by the coal-burning plant.
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