Whenever I see a question like this, my first answer is always, “It depends.” What factors determine cost?
* How much power do you need?
* How much sun does your location receive in an average year?
* How much of the installation can you do yourself?
* Are you tying into the grid, or will you be completely self-contained?
This week’s Friday picker-upper comes from a CNN Money article about Bob Metcalfe, widely acclaimed as the ‘inventor’ of the internet. Mr Metcalfe has had many successes as innovator and entrepreneur, and he is now turning his creative sights on…
The National Renewable Energy Labs has an online tool to help you calculate how much you might save by installing solar panels at your exact location. The program, entitled In My Backyard (IMBY) allows you to draw a solar array…
For the do-it-yourself crowd, there is a series of videos over at YouTube by a group called Green Power Science that you’ll be interested in seeing. The one below is a good example of the quality of their videos. It…
The end of the year is coming, and that means the last chance for new tax deductions for 2008. There has been a lot of press about federal and state tax incentives for solar panel and wind turbine installations, both…
Energy storage is key to developing usable renewable systems, because both solar and wind generation is by nature sporadic. While batteries are the first thought when looking at storage, other methods need to be developed to make new equipment viable…
The Reading (PA) Eagle has a great article by Darrin Youker today, dealing with that state’s attempts at energy diversity as a means to energy independence. In areas that were once relatively thriving coal communities, the now declining towns are…
According to the Boston Globe, Massachusetts is ahead of the planned yearly increases in available renewable energy for the state’s utilities, rising to more than 3% green. The plan is for this 1% increase to continue until 2020, when 15%…
At the University of Massachusetts Amherst Campus, wind power research has been going on for a long time, on campus, and with a test project on a nearby mountain top. In 2002, members of the Renewable Energy Research Lab and…
In order to get the opposition position out here quickly, today I’m offering a video, again from UK, in which footage is taken of an older generation wind turbine that generates no apparent noise. You’ll hear the narrator talking, you’ll…