Whether you own a home, run a business, or manage a municipal building – there are many important advantages of installing solar energy panels on your property.  Let’s review some of the biggest benefits.

 

1.  Solar Helps You Save on Your Electric Bill

Probably the biggest advantage of solar energy is immediate electricity bill savings. No matter how small your installation, you begin receiving smaller monthly bills from your local utility company – from Day 1.

But how large are these electricity bill savings? Solar energy is a modular technology, meaning you can install as many or as few panels as you like – whenever you like. Each new kilowatt of installed solar capacity brings you bigger electricity bill savings.  With a large enough installation, it’s possible to reduce your energy bill completely. However large your installation, you can expect your electricity bill savings to grow with time. As utility rates increase, clean energy from the sun remains consistently free. Solar is an investment that pays increasingly large dividends with each passing year.

 

2.  Solar Energy and Higher Property Values

Because solar energy helps you save on your electricity bill, it’s an investment that pays for itself many times over the 25+ year lifetime of your installation.  But the advantages of solar energy extend well beyond electricity bill savings.  Solar energy can also fetch you a much higher asking price when it comes time to sell your home. An average sized installation on a property can add more to the retail value of your home – an amount that exceeds the average cost of most residential solar installations, meaning you could not only be reducing or eliminating your electricity bill but also getting 100% of your money back when and if you sell the home. By contrast, most kitchen remodeling projects only deliver returns of 60%.  If you’re going to make home improvements, solar energy is pretty difficult to top. You enjoy lower electricity bills for as long as you remain in your house. And when it comes time to sell, you recoup 100% of your investment thanks to your property’s higher asking price.

 

3. Solar Energy and the Environment

Solar’s economic dividends are easy to measure in rands in cents. By installing panels today, it’s possible to save on electric bills and boost your home’s property value. But solar’s environmental dividends are no less tangible.  As more homes and businesses across the country install solar panels, our nation moves farther away from fossil fuel consumption and closer to a clean economy powered by the sun. The benefits of this transition are enormous:

• Better health due to cleaner air, water, and soil
• Greater energy security due to reductions in imported fuel
• Reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, the main cause of catastrophic climate change, global weirding, and severe weather
  

Solar energy’s dividends don’t simply benefit you – the system owner. They benefit anyone who enjoys having a cleaner and more sustainable environment (which means everyone).