#Shade control solar panel lens windows#

The PVWatts Solar Calculator, created by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, was a great help. It’s difficult to take an abstract system rating of, say, 5 kW and translate that into real power production. I then had to decide how large a system to install. Step 2: Determining the System Size and Getting Bids Suddenly the price of solar was looking very reasonable. Also working in my favor was a federal government tax credit that would let me write off 30 percent of the system’s price tag after other state and local rebates had been subtracted, up to a cap of $2000. Based on what I’d been hearing, though, it was clear that this generosity wasn’t going to last forever. Given that the price of a panel was around $4.50/W, Xcel would basically be paying for the panels while the homeowner paid for the installation. During the summer of 2008, the utility was paying $4.50 per watt for panels installed. At the time, the rebates were pretty generous. Next I looked at the rebates that my electric utility, Xcel Energy, was offering customers who switched to solar.

#Shade control solar panel lens windows#

The downside to all those windows is that the solar gain indoors is truly impressive during the summer, when daytime temperatures can easily rise above 32° C, necessitating the cooling. Our wonderful view of the Rocky Mountains is provided by large windows on the south and west sides of the house. Of that, our central air conditioning is a big contributor. The house, built in 2000, has 3500 square feet of finished space (about 325 square meters), and my family’s average annual electricity usage is about 8000 to 8500 kWh. I started with my home’s electricity usage. I’m an engineer, and so for me the first step in going solar was research.

I figured solar would at most save me about $1000 per year in electricity, so how could I justify installing a $40 000 system? In California, by contrast, tiered rates start at 11.9 cents/kWh and can climb as high as 49.8 cents/kWh. Until just recently, rates were a flat US $0.12 per kilowatt-hour. In part that’s because electricity rates in Colorado are dirt cheap. Boulder, located just east of the continental divide and about 50 kilometers from Denver, gets an amazing amount of sun: an average of 157 sunny days and 184 partly sunny days each year, according to the Colorado Climate Center.īut whenever I tried to crunch the numbers-the cost of the equipment, the cost of installation and maintenance, the eventual payback, rebates, and so on-solar never seemed financially viable. My house in Boulder, Col., is perfectly situated: It has a south-facing asphalt shingle roof, including the roof over the four-car garage, and being a relatively new house, it has few trees to block the sun. I’ve long toyed with the idea of getting solar panels.