I was reading a story on News Day about Stuart Cohen of Deer Park and his struggle with getting residential solar power installed on his Rode Island home. From the article after incentives his residential solar power system was going to cost him $38,000 to have installed..

Now that is a lot of money but when you are paying over $500 a month for energy cost it won’t take that long to get it back. The problem was that even though he had A-1 credit the bank said at this time they couldn’t loan him the money..

Now I know that people and especially banks are worried about the economy and what may happen to energy prices after the election. We all know that during the election gas prices go down as well as some of the other energy cost just to increase drastically within a year after the election..

The thing is to not worry about the economy. You should focus your attention on what it is that you want and not on what you are worried about. Mr. Cohen couldn’t get financing for his residential solar power system right now but truth be known in 6 months he will be able to easily get financing for the proposed residential solar power system he wants installed..

Another thing to keep in mind is that you don’t have to take the traditional route for having residential solar power systems installed on your home. You can purchase the units yourself at 20 to 30% less that what you would pay for the same residential solar power system and have a local handyman install them for you saving you a total of up to 50% on the total price of your residential solar power system..

You could also build the residential solar power system yourself and install it yourself and save over 90% on the total cost. There are always options. If Mr. Cohen had followed my first recommendation for installing his residential solar power system he could have had it completed for very little over the incentive package he could get from the government on the renewable energy bill presently in force..

Always look at your options and choose the one that is best for you and your situation. Though the initial out of pocket expense should be considered it may not be the most important factor..

When you look at cost before rebates and the return on investment for residential solar power system, Mr. Cliff Roodes of Long Island thought that his investment of $24,500 wasn’t bad. After getting $7,500 of that back in rebates he was indeed very happy and now after getting a check from the Long Island Power Authority for $6.64 he is even happier..

You see that $6.64 is the overage in electricity produced by his 24 home solar panels after one year of use. That means Mr. Roodes residential solar power system provided 100% of the electricity he used for the year with just a little over for good measure..

That gave Mr. Roode’s a return on investment of well over $2,000 a year. That isn’t bad for a residential solar power system consisting of 24 panels that was installed in 2006. With the increased in efficiency of home solar panels today that would most likely have been a much larger check from the Long Island Power Authority..

The reason I am talking about Mr. Roode’s residential power system is because he was one of dozens of homes and businesses in the area that opened their doors to visitors for the fifth annual National Solar Tour on Long Island. His story and the tour was covered by newsday.com..

The moral of the story is simple. You can have them installed, buy the kits and have them installed, install the kits or build the home solar panels yourself, it doesn’t matter, just pick one of the options your residential solar power system and go with it..

Power rates are going up and as they do the return on investment for the dollar spent today is going up.

Technorati Tags: , ,