Gardening Tips

Residential Solar Power

August 26, 2006 on 3:05 pm | In Gardening By Zones |

I’ve been wanting to add solar power to my place of residence since I did a report on residential solar power in 4th grade. That was quite awhile ago, and honestly I’m a little disappointed that we haven’t achieved residential solar power independance yet.

There is a good bit of solar power information at wikipedia.org, including advantages and disadvantages.

After all, plants have been living off solar power for millions of years. I’d like to invest in in when it is cheap enough. As I walked through Home Depot today, I checked the price for a residential solar power installation and it was around $20k for one that would provide energy for a larger home.

I will wait until that price drops by half before I really start considering it. One of the primary advantages aside from not burning oil is that in off-peak hours, you can sell the solar power back to the power company. I think that’s reason enough, depending on your rate of usage coupled with the savings in lower electric bills to pay for itself over 10 years.