Solar Fun Facts

1 kilowatt-hour (kWh) = the amount of electricity required to burn a 100 watt light bulb for 10 hours.

According to the US Department of Energy, an average American household used approximately 866-kilowatt hours per month in 1999 costing them $70.68.

About 30% of our total energy consumption is used to heat water.

A home solar system is typically made up of solar panels, an inverter, a battery, a charge controller, wiring and support structure.

Da Vinci predicted a solar industrialization as far back as 1447.

A 1-kilowatt home solar system will prevent approximately 170 lbs. of coal from being burned, 300 lbs of CO2 from being released into the atmosphere and 105 gallons of water from being consumed each month!

A 1-kilowatt home solar system will generate approximately 1,600 kilowatt hours per year in a sunny climate (receiving 5.5 hours of sunshine per day) and approximately 750 kilowatt hours per year in a cloudy climate (receiving 2.5 hours of sunshine per day)

A Solar Energy system can operate entirely independently, not requiring a connection to a power or gas grid at all. Systems can therefore be installed in remote locations (like holiday log cabins), making it more practical and cost-effective than the supply of utility electricity to a new site.

The global warming debate has really focused our minds on the need for us all to do our bit in reducing green house gases.

Today with the current technology we can start producing our own power right on our roof tops and sell it back to the local power grid.

Our home power station will produce the most energy when we use the most power; that is on hot summer afternoons.

In the USA and other countries there are significant grants for installing home solar and other micro power systems.

You can bet that there will more assistance by governments to get these home power stations happening.

The Best news of all is that over time your solar power station will save you money. Sometimes in the first year.

I will show you how you could save $65,000 in power bills over 30 years from your own power station for an average family home.

Larger homes and Businesses can save even more!

Fact. Most Power Utility Companies will give you a credit for the Power You Produce

The good news is that today for every KW of energy you produce, your utility company will deduct that usage from your power bill. This is called net metering.

If you produce all the energy you need, you save all the money that you were going to pay the Power Company.

Now here is whats really interesting. If you are on Time of Use contracts, then,on hot summer afternoons you will be getting a net-metering credit of about 20c per kw hour in summer.

Often power companies are paying much more than that because they a buying power on the spot market to cover peak demand.

In fact some power companies will pay real money for the power you produce. This is called feed-in tariffs. Ask your power company if they have a feed-in tariff program.

Feed-in tariffs were introduced in Germany in 2003 and the installations of Solar Power stations went ballistic. They installed more than 250 MW of small scale solar power stations in three years.Interestingly the German feed-in tariff is not government funded but they pay about 50c per KWH

Fact. Over time your Solar Power Station will cost you Nothing and could Save you Thousands.

If you live in California, in 11 years or less you will be getting paid double for the energy you produce, because the cost of electricity has gone up 6.7% a year since 1970.

In 11 years time, your are still producing that power for what it cost you when installed your power station, because you have virtually no running costs.

Your power station will last at least 25 year and probably up to 35 or even 40 years. So you will get at least 25 years of savings, may be more.

So what is the cost of Solar Energy lets take a typical example.

Please Note: These figures are indicative of the types of installations that can be done and are not claimed to be accurate.

Rebates and costs and solar outputs change from state to State.

For an average family home, the stats are:

KW Hours Per Year 12,000
KW Hours per month 1,000
KW Hours per day 33.

Federal Tax Credit of 30%
(Federal Tax Credit can be spread over 5 years).

Fact. Solar PV Panels Convert Sunlight Into Electrical Power

Sizing Solar Photo Voltaic (PV) Panels

When sunlight strikes a solar cell in a solar panel it is converted into electrical power. Currently, the best commercial solar panels convert about 14% to 16 % of the light that strikes them into energy. It is estimated that there is about 1000 watts of light power per Square Meter. A meter is 39 inches, so its 10.5 square feet.

This means that that you can expect to extract a maximum of 160 watts per hour per square meter of solar cells.

So 10 square meters (150 Square feet)will produce about 1600 watts per hour. Or 1.6 thousand watts (KW) per hour.

In practice it takes about 100 square feet to generate 1 KW of power per hour.

An average non energy efficient family home uses about 33 KW hours per day or 1000 KW hours per month.

There are between 5 to 7 sun hours per day in North America. That means you are only producing maximum output for 5 to 7 hours per day.

To Figure out how many square feet you need to produce 33 kw hours you divide you daily use by the number of sun hours.

33/5.5 = 6 kw per hour.

This means you need 6 x 100 = 600 Square feet.

So you need about 600 Square feet of Solar Panels to generate all you daily power requirements for an average family home.

Fact. The Cost of Energy is Set to Go Up

Guess what, the price you pay for electricity each year is probably going to go up. In the USA and every where else in the world it is the same. There are three ways electricity gets produced.

Nuclear, Fossil Fuels (Oil,Gas & Coal) and Hydro Electric (using Water in Dams).

Think about each of these. There is only one way, And that's up. If the price of electricity goes up by 5% a year. Then after 14 year it will cost twice as much.

If it goes up by 6.7 per year, which it has done in California for the last 30 years, the cost of electricity will double in just under 11 years.

Is nuclear power going to get more expensive or less expensive? The cost of uranium ore has tripled in the last 5 years. The cost of storing nuclear waste for 1000 years is going to be billions. All of which gets passed on to you.

For coal, oil and Gas. We should not be burning these should we. They increase green house gases. (There are technologies on the drawing board that will capture green house gases. But it going to increase the price.)

You can bet there is going to be a carbon trading scheme in the next few years. This means companies that generate lots of greenhouse gases using coal are going to pay for extra carbon credits. The cost of this will be passed on to you.

For Hydro Electric power, our water supplies have never been more precious. We will need to water to drink and for industry

Fact. Roof Top Solar Power Stations Make a Huge Difference.

Imagine many of our larger cities with more than 2 million people. Say there is 1 roof top for every 4 people. So that's about 500,000 roof tops.

If just 1 in 5 homes has a roof top solar power station with a 6 kw system like I describe above it would produce 500 mega (million) watts (MW) of power per hour on peak hot sunny days.

That's a lot of power by any ones standards.

That's 100,000 homes producing 5 kw of (AC) power per hour.

That's 500 mw that was created out of thin air! It was not there before but now it is.

Even if only 1 in 10 roof tops had a solar power station that's still 250 MW of power the power grid call on a hot sunny day.

It saves tens of thousands of tons of green house gases every year for 30 years.