Going Solar Is Cheaper Than Ever. Here’s What You Need to Know About Getting Your Power From the Sun

Thanks to solar panels being more affordable than ever, tax breaks and incentives, home solar systems have hit the mainstream. In fact, one is installed every 3.2 minutes — bringing the number of homes and businesses in the United States powered by the sun’s rays to more than 500,000. So are you ready to tap this eco-friendly form of energy? Here is everything under the sun to know about solar panels.
The possibilities aren’t endless.
In an ideal world, everyone would have solar-powered homes. But solar panels are only available to property owners. (Apartment dwellers, you’re out of luck.) The good news, however, is that photovoltaics (the scientific word for panels that generate electricity from sunlight) can be mounted to just about any type of roof, from slanted to flat, and just about any material — metal, gravel, composite, wood, clay or slate. Since solar panels can last for more than 30 years, the roof must be in good condition, so any cracks or leaks must be repaired prior to installation.
The general rule of thumb is that you’ll need about 100 square feet of unobstructed, shade-free roof space for every kilowatt (kW) generated. For example, a medium-sized 4kW solar system requires roughly 400 square feet. Objects such as trees, chimneys or other buildings can significantly reduce the performance of a solar system, and since you want the panels to absorb as much sunlight as possible, the ideal solar array should face south; eastern or western orientations will also work, but might not be as efficient.
Think power, not panels.  
When considering the size of your solar system, it seems logical to inquire about how many panels you will need. But instead, ask yourself, “How much energy do I want to generate?” The average American home uses 903kWh (kilowatt hours) of energy per month (or 32.25kWh per day), according to The Week. Running a 5kW solar system between six and seven hours each day could meet that energy demand. To get an idea of the appropriate system size for your household, check your most recent energy bill to see how much electricity (kWh) you have consumed. Then use this simple solar calculator to roughly estimate how many kilowatts of panels you’ll need to fit your energy requirements.
Your neighbors don’t have to like it.
But you must check with your local government, utility company and, if necessary, homeowners association to see if you can actually put panels on your roof. In some instances, a solar array might need to be arranged a certain way or it could be considered a fire hazard. (Click here to find out your state’s building codes and standards.) If panels aren’t an option for you, there are several other ways to capture the sun’s rays — personal solar chargers, solar pathway lights or buying solar power from your utility are just a few of the possibilities.
You won’t go bankrupt.
It’s cheaper than ever to live off the energy of the sun. Based on trends, the average cost of solar panels has dropped from $76.67 per watt in 1977 to about $0.613 per watt today, CleanTechnica writes. That’s even less than the cost of retail electricity in most cases. Based upon that price, a 5kW system should only set you back around $3,000. However, it’s likely that you’ll end up paying $18,000 to $40,000.
Why the extreme markup? Simply put, it’s because the total retail price of a solar installation includes not just the price per watt, but also installation fees, permits, monitoring equipment, overhead fees and more. (Click here for a complete price breakdown.) Additionally, the cost can jump tens of thousands of dollars if you live in a rainy city like Seattle or New Orleans and need extra panels in order to generate the amount of energy you require. In that case, solar might not be as cost-efficient as other means of power.
However, even if you don’t live in a particularly sunny area, solar could still be the way to go. As we previously reported, eastern states such as New Jersey, Massachusetts and Delaware are having solar booms due to aging power lines and rising prices of conventional electricity. At Geostellar you can check your home’s solar potential based upon its location, and you’ll also find a list of solar companies in your area.
Be ready to navigate multiple purchasing options.
Similar to car shopping, you’ll need to decide whether to buy or lease. An upfront purchase means you’ll have the full benefits of ownership, including tax benefits and any increase in your home’s value (in California, for example, a small 3kW system can add an average of $18,324 to the value of a medium-sized home). However, you’ll be responsible for your solar system’s maintenance — from ensuring that your panels remain clean (here are some helpful cleaning tips) to monitoring its performance in case any component fails. Panels are highly durable and require little upkeep, plus solar manufacturers usually include a 25-year warranty, so owning them is usually worry-free.
If you want to defray the high sticker price, there are two types of third-party financing: a Power Purchase Agreement (PPA) or a solar lease. Both require good to excellent credit in order to qualify and involve monthly payments to the solar company that owns, takes care of the installation and provides maintenance on the system. With a PPA, the harvested energy goes to the developer who then sells it back to you at a fixed rate (usually cheaper than your local power company). A solar lease, on the other hand, enables you to rent the equipment for a monthly fee and keep any power that’s produced.
Yes, there are some incentives.
By purchasing a solar or other renewable energy system, you are an environmental patron and therefore entitled to a 30 percent solar Federal Investment Tax Credit (ITC) until 2016. (You are not eligible if you lease or PPA.) There are also additional rebates, tax credits and other incentives, depending upon where you live. Learn more here.
Don’t try to DIY.
While installing a solar system yourself could save you about $3,000 in installation costs, it’s usually best to hire a reputable professional to do the work instead. To figure out which manufacturer to go with, opt for a large reliable company with lots of installation experience, advises Dr. Rajendra Singh, the D. Houser Banks professor of electrical and computer engineering at Clemson University in South Carolina. Look into SunPower, SolarCity, SunEdison and First Solar, or go to EnergySage for prices and reviews of local, regional and national installers in your area. Once you decide on a provider, be sure to ask these 10 questions.
 
 
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How to Crowdfund Solar Power

In 2011, when Michele King was the science coordinator at Pinnacle Charter School in North Denver, she was scouring Colorado for cheap solar panels — and not having much luck.
King, a former renewable energy scientist, knew that a solar installation on Pinnacle’s rooftop would help her budget-crunched school save money on their utility bills. But she also knew that Pinnacle couldn’t bear the high upfront costs of constructing a solar array.
“I was just about at my wit’s end,” says King. “No matter how we tried, we just couldn’t pull it together.” A local solar developer had designed an enticing installation for Pinnacle’s roof, but the problem remained: Who would pay for the panels?
Enter Mosaic, an Oakland, Calif.-based startup that’s harnessing the power of the crowd to transform clean energy financing. Part Kickstarter, part bank, Mosaic collects online investments, some as small as $25, to fund solar panels for buildings, like Pinnacle, that otherwise couldn’t afford them. The solar array makes money by selling electricity to the building and, in Pinnacle’s case, to the local utility; Mosaic takes a small cut and pays the rest to its online investors, typically yielding returns of 4 to 7 percent.
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Through Mosaic and its partner Distributed Sun, a Washington, D.C.-based solar financier, Pinnacle got its panels. Over 400 individuals invested in the 662-kilowatt installation, which over its lifetime will save the school up to $1.6 million, prevent over 50 million pounds of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere, and provide returns of around 5 percent to investors. (While Mosaic’s few critics complain that the company’s model for generating revenue is overly reliant on solar tax credits, businesses in every sector of the energy industry, including fossil fuels, benefit from government incentives.)
Yet the project’s greatest beneficiaries might be Pinnacle’s students: The school has incorporated the panels into a renewable energy curriculum that’s considered among the country’s most comprehensive.
“If you’re persistent and creative, these projects can happen,” says Alex Blackmer, founder of The Atmosphere Conservancy, a Colorado nonprofit that helped connect Pinnacle and Mosaic. “And having Mosaic in the picture is a tremendous help.”
Pinnacle Charter School is just one of many institutions whose solar dreams Mosaic is making a reality. The company, founded by longtime friends Daniel Rosen and Billy Parish in 2010, has already harnessed the power of the crowd to raise more than $5 million and successfully fund 19 projects. “We see Mosaic as both a business model and a movement,” says Rosen, the CEO to Parish’s president. “The mission is to be the No. 1  investment platform in the clean energy economy.”
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That economy seems to get more crowded by the day. Over the last decade, companies like Sungevity and SolarCity have dramatically increased the availability of residential solar by allowing homeowners to lease rooftop arrays, instead of forcing them to buy panels outright. The plummeting cost of panels, combined with the ascent of the solar lease, has some boosters dreaming of a distributed energy landscape on par with Germany’s, where individuals and farmers own more than 50 percent of renewable energy. On the investment side, a company called SunFunder operates as a renewable energy iteration of the online lending platform Kiva, dispensing crowdfunded loans to small businesses in developing countries — although unlike Mosaic, SunFunder doesn’t yet offer returns on investments.
Rosen’s own evolution to solar entrepreneur began as a climate-change-obsessed teenager, at Ridgewood High School in New Jersey. “I remember seeing my first solar system and feeling enamored,” he recalls. “The idea that you could create power anywhere felt magical to me.” Like Michele King years later, Rosen began lobbying his school’s administration to install a solar array. But without third-party capital, the school couldn’t afford the panels — a lesson that Rosen, now 27, says proved “very influential” in Mosaic’s inception. (Ridgewood got panels 10 years later, thanks to financing from a local utility.)
After high school, Rosen moved to Arizona to work with Wahleah Johns, founder of the Black Mesa Water Coalition, a Navajo organization in Flagstaff, Ariz., that was fighting water pollution caused by coal-burning power plants. He also reunited with an old friend: Billy Parish.
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By 2007, when he and Rosen reconnected, Parish was already a rising star in climate-change activism circles. He had dropped out of Yale University in 2002 to form a youth climate group called the Energy Action Coalition; in the intervening years, he’d campaigned for green jobs, started a green music label and written a book on socially conscious entrepreneurialism. “Billy’s a genius at building movements,” says Rosen, who first met Parish during his campaign to secure panels for Ridgewood High. “He intuitively understands how to connect different segments of society into powerful alliances.”
Parish had come to Arizona to support Black Mesa and Johns (whom Parish would soon marry) in their efforts to replace coal plants with wind and solar. The challenge was that tribes like the Navajo couldn’t take advantage of the clean energy tax credits that make solar and wind attractive investments. Nor, Parish realized, could schools, churches or nonprofits. Instead, most clean energy was financed by big banks and high-rolling investors.
“Tribes wanted to see a different paradigm for energy development, where they weren’t just leasing their land for pennies on the dollar, but where they were true owners of clean energy,” Parish says. Inspired by Black Mesa’s green economic development efforts, the seed of Mosaic began to germinate. “We realized that there was actually a broader need — that we should all be able to develop and own renewable resources.”
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That epiphany has brought Mosaic to some surprising places. During the company’s early days, it concentrated on providing panels to local groups with social consciences, like community centers and nonprofits. But as Mosaic’s pool of investors has grown, so has its reach: In 2013 it funded solar installations at convention centers, apartment complexes, bee farms, Ronald McDonald houses and a military base in Fort Dix, N.J. (While Mosaic’s projects are open to investments from the general public in New York and California, participation in other states is still limited to accredited investors.)
Mosaic’s diversity of projects appeals to investors like Brian Bell, an investment manager in Dallas who helped fund the Pinnacle Charter School solar effort. “Because it’s project-based, your investment is much more tangible than it would be in a mutual fund,” says Bell, who adds that his two young daughters were a powerful inducement to invest in both a school and clean energy. “This is a way to combine good financial sense with principles that I think are important.”
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With This One Step, Elon Musk Turned SolarCity From a Panel Installer Into a Utility Company

Some industry analysts predict that solar companies will replace utility companies this century. Elon Musk just gave that prediction a lot more credibility. Musk’s solar company, SolarCity, announced that it is on track to raising $54.4 million from private investors. The company has roughly 68,000 signed contracts in the United States. The financial plan is remarkable because it is a first for a solar company; it means, as Fast Co.Exist notes, “SolarCity is financing itself as a utility might.” Other solar companies may soon follow, and soon after, all our roofs will be paved with panels.
Sources: FastCo.Exist
[Image: Araya Diaz/Getty Images for TechCrunch]