3 Simple Steps For Determining Your Potential Savings From Installing Solar Power

Solar power systems, also known as Photovoltaic systems can have an extremely favorable effect on your power bill if you install them in a place where there is always unobstructed sunlight. However the initial costs of purchasing and setting up a solar power system for your home or office can be very high. For that reason you should first carry out a costs/benefits survey to make sure that you will get a favorable return on your investment. Here are a few steps that you should carry out in order to be sure that your investment will not turn out to be unfruitful.


1. Calculating current energy costs

In order to accurately calculate your current average power costs per annum you will need the data regarding your average power usage for at least the past 24 months. This data may be gathered from your previous power bills, if you have catalogued them. If you do not have the copies of the power bills, or your electrical supply company maintains all of its previous records online, you can get the data from there. If you are still, for any reason unable to get the data by yourself you can call up your power company and ask them how many units of electricity you have used in the past 24 months. The ideal scenario would be if you find data of your yearly usage of electricity for at least two stable years. Stable years are those in which you did not leave the house for an extended period of time, such as for a vacation. You can then get an average of your yearly usage of electricity in the units that your electrical supply company uses. Usually power usage is calculated in KWh (Kilowatt-hours). You can then check out the current power tariff to see how much each power unit costs and what are your current energy costs.


2. Calculating potential savings

Potential savings can be calculated by finding how many units of electricity can be generated by the solar power system that you have installed. You can carry out research to find out that on average how many hours your area receives sunlight in one day. The data for this task must be collected from the whole year as days are longer in the summer and shorter in winters. You must then multiply the number of hours per year that receive sunlight with the rated generation capacity of the solar power system that you want to install (usually measured in watts). You must then divide the answer by 1000 to get your answer in KWh. This is the power your solar panels can produce per year. You can multiply this number by the cost of 1 KWh from the electrical power company to calculate your theoretically possible savings per annum.


3. Saving money by selling power to the electric company

Along with saving money on electricity which you have not used through your usage of solar panels, you can also sell the excess electricity generated by the solar panels back to the electric company. You can calculate your potential earnings by first finding out what amount your electric company pays per KWh. Once you have found out this value, you can multiply that value with the theoretical yearly generation capacity of your solar power system that you had calculated earlier to find out how much money you can earn back per year on your initial investment on the solar power system.