I recently watched a fascinating episode of Nova on PBS reporting on the subject of solar energy production. Title of the episode is Saved By The Sun. The show revealed that the USA is way behind other countries in the development and use of solar power generation.

The government of Germany passed laws to promote public and private solar power generation that have dramatically reduced the demand on the power generating stations. The result is that the generation of electricity has become decentralized and more efficient and less polluting.

Basically, people and businesses are generating up to two thirds of their electric consumption on site. And any over-production on site is put back on the grid for others to use thus reducing the output demand for the power generating stations which are the least efficient and most polluting producers.

So I looked into it and have come to discover that the state I live in has an incentive program in place that encourages homeowners and businesses to invest in solar panel installations at their respective domiciles and places of business. And it is a very seductive set of incentives. The cost of the installation can be offset by up to as much as 50% through local power company rebates and federal tax credits.

The cool thing is if you install a $30,000 system at your residence it will only ultimately cost you around $15,000. You end up with a house that has a 30k asset improvement, and your electric bill is dropped by 50 to 65%.

This reduces your carbon footprint significantly. At this time the use of solar panels is just a blip on the radar around the world.

I have contacted three separate companies to come to my house to give me an estimate on what an installation would cost and what it would produce.

Go to PBS.org and click on the NOVA link, I think you can watch the show online. It is really informative and it is one of the few programs recently that gave me hope about what could happen down the road with clean energy production.

Think of all the roofs!

Heck, think of all the surfaces of any kind that are just sitting there in the sun absorbing all that heat energy.