SURE HOUSE

The sun is an endless source of energy; the SURE HOUSE team is excited to harness it and power our home for the competition in sunny Irvine, California. We hope for solar to become mainstream, and there are several incentives to push homeowners to go solar.

New Jersey offered rebates and incentives for PV arrays installedbeginning March 2001. As of now, the NJ Clean Energy committee no longer provides up-front rebates for solar installations. SEIA (Source 1) asserts the cost of a residential PV system to be about $5.00 per watt on average. Even with prices going down each year, the upfront cost of solar can still be too much for families to handle financially.

Where do we go from here? Thankfully, the Clean Energy (Source 2) program still has incentives provided through Solar Renewable Energy Certificates (SRECs for short). The program is performance-based; this means that the more energy your system harnesses, the more money you get. According to DSIRE (Source 3), the average price was $225-$390 per MWh (megawatt-hour). If your system isnew with a 5 year warranty and tied into the grid, you’re eligible toapply for SRECs. Be aware that credits are variable month-to- month; steady income is not guaranteed.

Another alternative is net-metering (Source 4). If your solar panels produce more energy than you consume, then you can sell the excess power back to the grid. There is also a federal tax credit (Source 5) on PV systems, a sales tax exemption (Source 6) for solar energy equipment, and solar loan (Source 7) options.

Our team hopes that these incentives will help push solar power to become a mainstream energy source. What do you think? Will solarbecome mainstream with these initiatives in place, or do we need more? Interact with us on Facebook and Twitter.