Solar panels are becoming increasingly popular in the US, with the nation’s total solar energy production growing 3500% since 2008. As the industry is growing, panels are getting cheaper and cheaper with prices dropping 50% since early 2014. Even better, federal and state tax incentives are often making solar a more cost effective option than the grid. Solar power is a vast topic but in this post we’ll talk about how solar panels work, how they help the environment and how they can save you money.

Every hour, the sun sends around 430 quintillion joules of energy to the earth’s surface. That’s enough to power the entire world for a full year! Solar panels use technology called photovoltaic cells which capture a tiny fraction of this energy. The cells consist of a semiconductor that is chemically treated to have a positive and negative end which knocks electrons loose from atoms and gives us electricity. Large amounts of these cells are fit onto panels which multiplies the capacity. This energy is passed to a solar inverter which converts the DC current to AC current that can be used in your home.

Because solar panels are a clean alternative to replace fossil fuels and other environmentally unfriendly sources of energy, they are amazing for our environment. If solar panels were to replace natural gas for example (which produces about half as much emissions as coal per unit of energy) we would reduce energy related carbon emissions by 31%. In addition to solar panels not producing carbon emissions when converting energy, solar energy doesn’t need to be extracted from the earth like other sources of energy. Extracting fossil fuels like natural gas uses a process called “fracking” which takes a median of 1.5 million gallons of water per fracking well.

Solar panels can be really cost effective too! The average Massachusetts household uses 607 kilowatt hours of electricity a month and pays about $130 for it. The average cost of solar is $14,500-$18,850 but with federal and Massachusetts tax incentives, it becomes $9123-$11,554. If you finance that with a ten year low interest solar loan, the price per month comes out to around $90-$110. After the loan is paid off, you get free electricity for the rest of the solar panel’s life, usually 25-30 years! Many Massachusetts electricity companies support solar power with a program called net metering. With this model, you can get energy credits by giving your excess solar power to the grid when you’re not using as much. When you need more energy than your solar panels provide, you can use this credit and never have to pay for extra power.

Overall, solar panels offer a variety of captivating benefits for the world around us, and using them has recently become financially practical with new technology and government-aided programs. I hope this post gave you some new information and maybe even convinced you to go solar! If you’d like to learn more about this topic, here are some of the sites I used:

https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/energy-and-the-environment/where-greenhouse-gases-come-from.php
https://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=MA
https://www.eia.gov/electricity/sales_revenue_price/pdf/table5_a.pdf
https://news.energysage.com/how-much-does-the-average-solar-panel-installation-cost-in-the-u-s/
https://www.energysage.com/solar/cost-benefit/solar-investment-tax-credit/
https://www.energysage.com/local-data/solar-rebates-incentives/ma/
https://www.masssolarloan.com/
https://news.energysage.com/mass-solar-loan-explained/
https://news.energysage.com/solar-panels-work/                                                                                                                                                                  https://www.energysage.com/local-data/solar-rebates-incentives/ma/