The Many Advantages of Solar Power

1. Solar power reduces your monthly bills
2. Solar panels increase your property value
3. Solar panels clean up our air
4. Solar power keeps you connected and in control
5. Solar panels help keep your home powered during blackouts
6. Solar panels qualify for federal and local tax credits
7. Solar power works in the most remote location

Thinking of installing solar panels on your roof? More and more homeowners are switching to solar every day.

If you’re hesitant, we understand. It’s a pretty major upgrade to a home. There’s a lot of paperwork that goes with it. There are uncertainties surrounding it. What if it’s the wrong time to go solar? Should you wait until prices go down more? Is it really as environmentally friendly as they say? How does payment for solar even work?

We’re here to tell you it’s okay. It’s not as scary or overwhelming as they say.

To quickly address those specific questions:

• It’s not at all the wrong time; the sooner you go solar, the sooner you see the benefits. You’re not too early or too late. If you think you would like to go solar, then you should.
• We’re at a time in history where prices have gotten really low, PV solar panel technology has gotten really good, and the trends have leveled off quite a bit. It won’t do much good to keep waiting, and while you wait, your utility prices keep going up and up and up.
• Yes — using solar panels to produce power means that for decades, you’ll have up on your roof a clean, renewable source of electricity. Once they begin to operate, every watt produced comes from the energy of the sun, not by burning coal at a plant. Burning coal costs money and pollutes our air. We’re at a point in our solar revolution where every panel added to a roof reduces the amount of fossil fuels used to generate electricity for the entire grid. One home is a small step, it’s true — but it’s a step in the right direction, and every step counts. We’re cleaning up our air one rooftop at a time!
• We’ve got plenty of payment options for solar homeowners — we’ll happily explain the differences, and you can pick the one that you’re most comfortable with. Our goal is always to make sure that you spend less money each month, not more, so we’ll work to provide transparency and easy comparisons to your current bills.

Once you get past the fear and uncertainty, you’ll see there are clear advantages to going solar.

Seven of the most popular advantages to solar power come directly back to you, the homeowner.

Seven direct benefits with solar are…

1. Solar power reduces your monthly bills

As mentioned above, our goal is to make sure you pay less money. With the right amount of solar power and the right payment plans, you’ll have more money in your pocket each month, right from the start. And over time, your savings will only increase, so that over a decade or two, your solar panels will have saved you thousands and thousands of dollars.

Utility rates fluctuate depending on a variety of factors — in some cases, utilities can increase your rates with little warning, and without your consent. But when you switch to solar, you can lock in your rates for the next 20 years and you won’t get any of those surprises that you get with traditional utility companies.

Related: Rebates, Credits, and More: 3 Home Energy Efficiency Moneymakers

2. Solar panels increase your property value

Another way solar panels can put money in your pocket is through your home itself. According to Zillow Research, homes with solar panels tend to sell for more money — on average, 4.1% more than homes without solar panels installed.

The number can vary by market, of course, but not unpredictably. Where you’d expect home prices to be a higher value than the national average, you can also expect solar panels to add a higher value. For example, in New York City, the average boost to home value that solar adds is way up at 5.4%.

This alone can easily offset the cost of the panels and installation. So in addition to saving money each month on power usage, solar provides a positive-value investment in home value. As an added bonus, having PV solar panels installed can also help you sell your home faster. A study from the US Department of Energy found that solar panels are viewed as upgrades, similar to renovated kitchens or refinished basements.

3. Solar panels clean up our air

Did you know that the entire planet’s reserves of fossil fuels — all our coal, oil, and natural gas — can be matched by just 20 days of the sun’s energy? It’s wild to think about how much we could be powering with clean, renewable sunshine instead of extracting, transporting, and burning fossil fuels.

And it’s that extracting, transporting, and burning of these finite resources that pollutes our atmosphere more than anything else. By switching to solar at home, you’ll help your utility company use less of those resources to make power for your community.

And the less fossil fuel you and your neighbors need to burn, the cleaner your air will be. And that’s not just something nice — that also helps you save money. Asthma becomes less of a problem where air is cleaner, and where medical issues decrease, local tax resources aren’t as strained. With a cleaner environment, you could actually pay a lot less in taxes. Yet another way solar helps us all!

And that’s not fiction, by the way. Since the adoption of the Clean Air Act in 1963, the EPA estimates that we’ve saved $2 trillion in costs and hundreds of thousands of lives by preventing serious asthma events, bronchitis attacks, heart attacks, and other related hospital admissions.

The costs and benefits of the Clean Air Act, according to EPA data. (Roger Warburton/ecoRI News) 

Bonus: if you’d like to help your neighbors go solar — and earn between $500 and $2,000 for yourself for each one — we have a referral program. Get your friends and family to go solar and you’ll keep those benefits coming!

4. Solar power keeps you connected and in control

With your online monitoring app, you can take control of your power in a very real way. You’ll be able to monitor your solar panels’ electricity production right from the palm of your hand. A smartphone or tablet is all you need. You’ll finally have full visibility into your power production — and your power use.

For homeowners who want to truly maximize the money they get from solar, keeping an eye on the panels’ productivity can provide a window to where better everyday habits could be adopted. Sometimes even small adjustments can turn into big savings through net metering.

Net metering isn’t available in all areas, but even if it’s not something you can take advantage of it, you can still save more money than you spend each month.

5. Solar panels help keep your home powered during blackouts

It is true that solar panels on their own are connected to the grid, so when the utility company shuts off the power, that does include your solar-powered home. But if you go for a whole-home solution, which includes battery storage, your home can flip to a self-contained power source.

A complete setup would include more than just solar panels and a backup battery. You’ll have a smart switch that connects your home to primary grid power and automatically switches from the grid to your own system seamlessly in the event of a blackout. You can even get secure backup for your backup battery, as multiple microinverters prevent loss of power and maintain maximum access to the stored energy.