The Heat Is On!!!!
Its summertime….Are you ready to feel the heat? Let’s talk SOLAR POWER in Burbank, CA!!!
What made me want to revisit a complicated and expensive proposition? BP did – I am very disgusted by the BP mess! Being faced with environmental issues and watching oil well spew so much toxic waste into the ocean has motivated me look for alternative fuel sources for my home.
So what choices do I have? There is wind – not too great for us, we live in Burbank and it isn’t windy enough to really help. Battery, besides being 30% more in cost, the technology is still not there yet. So in the end, Solar comes out on top.
In Los Angeles we get an average of 5.63 hours of solar radiation per day. Solar panels work best when facing south and for our area at a pitch of 33.9 degrees. Calculating our electrical needs – we would need roughly 5,360 watts of solar panel to handle 100% of our electrical needs.
So how much would this cost us? If we did it ourselves, around $7.00 per watt. A “Do-it-yourself” job in our case is not going to happen. Our roof pitch is about 40 degrees – when my husband hangs the Christmas lights he looks like Spiderman hanging off the roof gables. So…NO to the husband on the roof for a solar system..…For heavens sake…I almost have him trained, don’t need to lose him now!
If we had it installed by a licensed contractor, the cost would be about $9.00 per watt. That includes the cost of the panels, inverters, wire, mounts, and other hardware. It does not include anything else we might need, like inspections, extra watt meters or other requirements from the city electric company.
So a fully installed system would cost us $37,500 at a minimum.
What are the Federal Tax Incentives: 30% of cost subtracting installation. There is no upper limit. This incentive is available until 2016.
The City of Burbank offers a rebate which is paid on a sliding scale of power generated by the solar panels. Overall, the incentive cannot be more than 50% of the cost of the system. The City’s program is complex and even though we would be providing our own power, The City still would send a bill for the night time electrical usage. So, by my calculations, we wouldn’t receive much benefit from that program.
Overall solar energy is still too expensive for us to make this major purchase. Hopefully, cheaper technology is on the way so we can all partake!