More than ever before, it’s important to make your home a more efficient consumer of energy. Rising energy costs severely influence the cost of your energy bill in the winter and summer, and you could easily save yourself a hundred dollars or more each month just by making your home more efficient. However, you can be saved from having to pay anything to your electric company if you generate your own electricity. A few years ago, it wasn’t a really cost efficient option for homeowners, but as all technology advances, it becomes cheaper to produce and market to consumers. Therefore, a solar energy efficient home is quickly becoming a popular choice among aspiring home owners today.
All Your Energy Needs
A solar energy efficient home combines the best of energy efficiency technologies with solar panels, which generate a certain amount of reliable electricity each day. Firstly, energy efficient appliances and lighting help to minimize the amount of energy your home needs to function correctly each day. Insulation around pipes, water heaters, and in the walls, roof, and basement help to reduce the amount of heating or cooling that you need, helping to significantly reduce your heating and cooling electrical costs. Basically, energy efficiency refers to any steps taken to do the same amount of work but at a lesser electrical cost. A solar energy efficient home uses the latest energy efficiency techniques to reduce the amount of power need from the solar power generators.
The real heart of a solar energy efficient home lies within its solar energy capabilities. Solar panels act like the leaves of a tree to utilize solar energy, except that they turn solar energy into usable electricity for you to use. A typical 300 watt solar panel costs anywhere from $1500-$2000, and depending on the number of hours that you have lights turned on, that can generate enough electricity to run about 12 fluorescent light bulbs every day. Essentially, you can expect for your solar energy home installation to pay itself off within ten years at most, and every single month after that, you’ll be saving hundreds of dollars on your energy bill. If you generate enough electricity, your solar energy efficient home can actually give electricity back into the power grid, and your local power company will actually buy the electricity off of you. With a solar energy efficient home, you could actually be earning money on your investment in a few years.