What You Need to Know to Get the Right Solar System for your Home
Here are important factors you should consider when choosing if solar makes sense for your home.
Solar panels are not created equally. In fact, there’s a large range in efficiency, performance and reliability. SunPower® has been leading the solar revolution. They design, manufacture and deliver new solar technologies, changing the way homes are powered today.
There are a couple of important factors you should consider when choosing if solar makes sense for your home: your electricity costs, climate, size and direction of your roof and your local solar incentives. SunPower Solar has prepared a short list of questions to help you gage the value to your home:
How much does your current electricity cost?
The more you spend on electricity each month, the faster your solar investment will pay off. Generally, if you pay more than $50 each month on your electric bill solar will make financial sense for you.
What are the incentives available for solar in your area?
The Investment Tax Credit enables you to reduce solar costs by as much as 30%. By using Federal, state, and local solar incentives, it is possible to cut the cost of your installation in half. The best way to learn more about solar incentives is through your local SunPower dealer.
Do you live in a climate suitable for solar energy?
While clear, sunny skies are ideal, you can still generate substantial amounts of solar power on overcast days. If you live in a part of the Bay Area with a lot of cloud or fog, ask your installer to recommend solar panels that produce the most solar energy in a range of conditions.
Solar systems are often described by the amount of power they are able to produce in a given instant (measured in watts or kilowatts). The most important factor to consider when comparing residential solar systems, is the amount of actual electricity the system is expected to generate during its lifetime (measured in kilowatt-hours). When compared to other brands, SunPower high efficiency solar panels produce the most electricity in a wide range of conditions over the lifetime of the solar system.
What size and direction is your roof?
The layout, orientation, and size of your roof help determine the best solar technology to install. South- and west-facing roofs are best. Regardless of your roof size, higher efficiency panels will require less roof space.
SunPower solar panels use more sun than conventional solar panels, which means they generate more electricity per panel, and use less roof space to produce the energy you need. With SunPower, you enjoy the greatest savings on your electricity bill over the lifetime of your solar energy system.
How will the solar panels affect the looks of your home?
Solar innovation has come a long way to make sure that your solar system does not detract from the design and architecture of your home. Ask your installer to suggest a system that will blend with your roof, such as SunPower signature™ black solar panels and the low-profile SunPower Smart Mount mounting system.
Form meets function. SunPower Signature black solar panels are designed to generate the highest amount of solar power per solar cell in an elegant panel format. With our SunPowerMaxeon™ solar cell technology, they eliminated metal gridlines, put wide and thick metal contacts on the back of the solar cell, out of sight, and placed the solar cells onto a black panel background. So SunPower Signature black solar panels not only capture more sunlight, their engineering creates a streamlined design that blends into the roof of your home. This design allows their residential solar systems to integrate with a wide range of environments and architectural styles.
SunPower offers a complete solar energy solution, from highest-efficiency solar panels and inverters to mounting system and energy monitoring.
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