By Ben Ford

One of the biggest and perhaps most heard of questions concerning solar panels is “How much is this going to cost me?” While this particular question has been heard throughout history for most goods it is especially important with solar panels. Converting your home to run of off solar energy can be very costly and you need to make sure you buy within your means.

So what’s the average price of a solar panel these days? Well to be honest it depends on your needs. The cheapest solar panel can cost as little as $10.00 U.S.D while the most expensive can run $2,500.00 U.S.D or higher. Obviously that’s a huge price difference and there’s also a huge difference in quality. In order to figure out your total cost you have to first figure out what you’re doing with your home.

If you just want an auxiliary power supply to augment your home or an external supply for landscaping and lights then you won’t pay much. These are low powered devices which require light power but the panels for them won’t handle the needs of a house. When augmenting your home your hard line connection to the power grid handles the heaviest parts of the load while the solar panels simply provide additional energy.

This situation is most commonly seen when you’re in the middle of upgrading or simply want to reduce your power bill. If you’re making your entire home self powered with solar panels then you’re going to need some cash. Depending on how much power you use and what’s being run in your home the cost can be between $10,000.00 and $40,000.00 U.S.D total.

Again this is heavily dependent on how much energy you actually need. You can get by with a bunch of low cost panels if you don’t use any heavy duty appliances but if you want to use a washer or dryer you’ll need something more powerful. Appliances have various wattage and voltage requirements and if your system cannot provide this amount of energy then you’ll have a brownout in your home.

The most effective way to figure this all up is to calculate your daily power usage. This isn’t for billing purposes but you need to know what the most energy you use at one time is. After figuring this out you need to find solar panels that can be configured to provide this amount of energy. You then divide the amount of power you need by the energy provided by different panel sizes.

You then take the resulting number and multiply it by the cost of a single solar panel and you’ll have the total cost for all of your panels. This does require a bit of math and a lot of patience but it is the best way to figure things out. You can use a calculator to help if you need to but it’s much cheaper than having a contractor do it.

You’ll still have to buy all the support equipment for your home but the panels are where you can spend the most money. Remember to find out how much energy you use at one time then find the panels with the outputs that can provide this when installed. Then divide the power provided by the panel into your total power usage and the resulting number will tell you how many you need to buy. Take this number and multiply it by the cost of a single unit and you’ll have your total cost.

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