Nashville Technology Council

The Nashville Tech Story (8/31/2009)

As the economy slowly begins to stabilize and take an upward swing for a change, the world is looking to find new ways to save money.  As witnessed in our blog posting last week, the Pinnacle building in Nashville and the Willis Tower in Chicago, formerly known as the Sears Tower, have taken an aggressive approach using “green” technology to create long term savings.

While all of the improvements are being made, a lot of focus has been put on the use of large turbines to utilize wind power to save cost.  However, another type of power that has lost some attention is the use of solar energy.  At least, that used to be the case.

Industry experts are reporting that the reductions in solar power costs are expected to not only drop, but decrease significantly.  The downside of using solar power has always been the extreme expense of installing solar panels for collecting and transferring energy into the home or business.  Materials and installation expenses are one of the main reasons for the anticipated savings, with projections dipping nearly one-third less than current costs over the next several years. 

For residential buyers, a one-third reduction in cost would equal an average savings of $16,000; dropping the normal budget from nearly $24k to only $8k.  Help from state and federal governments has already been seen in the “cost cut” cause, as some residents, like those in California, are eligible for state and federal rebates.  The primary reason for the drop in price is the significant decrease in production costs for solar cells. 

Currently, the use of solar energy is most popular in places like Germany and Japan.  The hope is that the United States government will take the same approach as the Germans.  The German government placed a premium on “green electrons.”  They have developed a policy that pays solar energy producers a fixed amount of money per watt at a rate guaranteed for 20 years. 

This is great news for solar power investing homeowners, who have been given the ability to generate a healthy rate of return from their solar energy investment.

One of the main concerns on our home soil is that rolling blackouts continue to effect the Southwestern United States and a substantial investment in solar energy should alleviate the problem.