7 Reasons to “Go Solar” in Florida

1. Increase Your Home Value

2. Low Maintenance

3. 30% Federal Tax Credit will continue into next year.

4. Better for the Environment by Lowering your personal Carbon Footprint. Your fuel (sunlight) will never run out and produces no emissions (unlike natural gas and coal). “A typical residential solar panel system will eliminate three to four tons of carbon emissions each year—the equivalent of planting over 100 trees annually.” accourding to Energy Sage.

5. Long Term Savings: the average Florida homeowner pays off their solar panel system in seven to eight years and sees an ROI of 20% or more.

6. Low Cost financing options: Florida is one of only two states in America to have an active and funded PACE loan program. These loans tend to carry fairly normal interest rates (around 4.9%-5.9%) but the unusual thing about these loans is that they are repaid through your property tax assessment and stay with the house if you sell it rather than the one who owned the home when the Solar Energy System was installed.

7. It’s exciting to be a part of this¬ technological, green movement! Taking advantage of this clean and renewable way to generate power is the right thing to do for many Florida Homeowners. Solar technology is developing fast, with new breakthroughs all the time: higher efficiencies, lower cost, easier installations.

Understanding Net Metering in Florida

With utility power costs rising each year, installing a Solar Energy System as a long term investment to reduce the amount of their future energy bills is one of the benefits to homeowners. Yet, the net metering benefits of Solar Panels are limited to customers of the publicly owned utilities because these companies are required to by the Florida Public Utilities Commission to offer full 1 for 1 net metering to their customers.

Homeowners receive a credit on their utility bill for the electricity they send back to the grid. Later, when they are using more electricity than their solar panels have generated, they can use those credits instead of having to pay more to their utility company. This process is known as Net Metering.

Therefore, when you generate more solar power during the middle of the day than what your house needs, and thus export surplus power to their grid, the utility company is required to give you the full retail value of that excess power.

What this means to you is that for each kWh (kilowatt hour) of solar power that you export to their grid in the day you get to use another kWh of power for free at another time, like during the night when your solar energy system is not producing enough power to run your home.

Grid-tied solar electic system

Duke Energy explains that Solar power is most commonly produced when photovoltaic (PV) systems convert sunlight into electricity.

For more information, please contact a local expert: Paul Dudley at SunRun 407-450-3105. With Sunrun’s residential rooftop solar, storage and energy services, homeowners are saving money while dramatically reducing the amount of air pollution and carbon dioxide (CO2) they release into the atmosphere.

Also, contact the references and relevant authorities and local utilities for the most up-to-date and accurate information on state and utility policies and incentive programs.