What If Solar Were On Every Family's Roof?

WHAT IF SOLAR WERE ON EVERY FAMILY'S ROOF ? The annual energy bill for a typical single family American home is $1,255, resulting in $144 billion spent per year for 115 million U.S. households. ONE FAMILY'S SOLAR HOME SAVINGS For example, the average household in San Francisco could save this much by going solar .. The amount of money you save by going solar depends on many different small solar system: medium solar system: large solar system: $1,109.60/year $1,664.40 year $3,328.80 year factors: (Avg. $92/month) (Avg $139/month) (Avg. $277/month) Energy prices fluctuate by state. The national average per kilowatt/hour (kWh) is $0.117. NATIONAL IMPACT With solar paneling outputting for five hours a day, each household would produce 10,950 kilowatt hours per year, resulting in more than Going solar is even more cost effective if you If every U.S. house had a medium solar system, saving each household on average $1,281 per year, national savings would reach live in one of the states with 1 trillion kilowatt hours really expensive grid power: California, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, Hawaii, Alaska or Delaware. nationwide per year. $147 billion annually. RETURN ON INVESTMENT Solar can be pricey in states with low or no incentives, but more states have been launching these in recent years. New leasing programs, too, can sometimes make it possible to earn a return on investment with the very first month of having solar. The position of your home and the way the sun hits it affects how much solar ESTIMATED PAYBACK TIME (Industry Estlimates) HYBRID CARS: 6.5 YEARS A 2010 Honda Civic hybrid costs $3,545 more than a non-hybrid model, but drivers reap a few hundred dollars in gas savings each year, according to Edmunds.com. energy you can generate (and therefore, how much money HOME SOLAR ELECTRICITY: 6 YEARS In states with leading-edge solar-incentive programs like New Jersey, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, that payback period can drop to as little as four years. you'll save). Solar incentives and rebates vary by state. HIGH-EFFICIENCY WASHING MACHINES: 5 YEARS The green premium is small: Whirlpool, for example, asks $70 more for the high-efficiency version of its basic washer and estimates it trims water bills by $15 a year. SOLAR POWER AND AIR QUALITY U.S. HOMEOWNERS WARMING To SOLAR The average U.S. home generates an average of 2,700 lbs. of air pollution annually. With an estimated 115 million U.S. households in 2010, total air pollution estimates reach more than 310 billion Ibs. per year. According to Rochester Solar Technologies, one 10 kWh solar system can prevent 4,237 Ibs. of sulfur dioxide and In spite of the recession, the U.S. market for residential A 2010 study by National Renewable Energy Lab found that homes with solar panels sold 20% faster than non-solar homes and fetched a 17% higher asking price. solar panels doubled in 2009. 1,364 Ibs. of nitrogen oxides entering the air over the system's lifetime. Solar adoption is in high gear in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, where a juicy incentive called SREC pays households to go solar. In New Jersey, for instance, solar households make an average of $5,000 to $7,000 a year, just for having panels on the roof. Sources: EIA.gov, Census.gov, Energystar.gov, Livestrong.com, Thecabin.net, wall Street Journal, European Photovoltalc Industry Association 1BOG.org