The Solar Panel Industry Is Lowering Costs

If you drive around the country, especially in states with large amounts of sunshine, you will see solar panels flourishing like spring flowers.  To be sure, you have witnessed the ever-increasing population of the shiny black grids on a lot of the roofs over the past 10 years? Your ocular devices aren’t deceiving you, the number of houses with solar panels grew by 1000% over the recent years. That's a lot of growth. 

Department Of Energy

The Department of Energy forecasts that trend to continue and predicts that one million homes will have solar panels by 2020. Why such extraordinary growth so fast? It was all in recognition of a significant decay in solar prices over the last few years. 

Recently, when the Chinese government rocked the worldwide solar market by throwing low-cost solar financing into the sector which increased solar panel manufacturing further than ten-fold over the last couple of years.  When this happened we saw prices for solar fall. The high volumes of solar panels on the market, costs plummeted, falling from $2.79 per watt into $1.59 per watt. That was bad headlines for competing solar panel manufacturers, but excellent news for customers who benefitted from low prices.

The prices of solar panels express only one part of you pay when you go solar. There also are also “soft costs” to consider. 

The NREL

Across the land solar panel costs keep falling, soft solar panel costs now compose the majority of what you pay when you install solar on your house. Fortunately, as various people adopt solar power, soft costs have fallen. As a consequence, this is a trend that is expected to continue. An examination by the federal government’s National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) determined that installed prices have plunged on average an annual rate of 13% to 18% per year since 2009. And while slumps in panel prices have leveled out, soft costs continue to drop. NREL transcribes that from 2013 to 2014, non-panel expenses have slid 10% year over year.

Curious about solar hard costs vs. soft costs near you, and how that might affect your own solar panel pricing? We here at HahaSmart you will have a look at what we can offer you on the cost of solar panels and cost of solar installations. We will strive to find you the best prices available. Follow the solar experts. Try our price checker tool. It tells you how much solar power you need and how much you can save on your energy bills each month. Please visit our solar blog to find out more about the benefits of going solar.