As for an income source, it's a tricky one. The equipment and materials needed to produce electricity are usually expensive and the electricity itself is cheap (fortunate for consumers but not for producers). It usually takes a fair bit of investment to acquire and install an energy system that produces enough to justify a grid-tie and reverse-flow meter--$5,000-$20,000+. Once installed and producing, most residential-sized energy generation systems produce somewhere around $30-80/month of energy. The income from the energy would likely not sustain you and you would still need to recover your initial investment. Most renewable energy installations have a 15-30 year break-even point when you have finally paid for the system and can begin to pocket the income from the energy sold to the grid.
You can do it. However, people usually do not. It is not cost effective. Add solar panels to the roof of a house, and it may cost you at least $20,000. the estimated payback time is as long as 15 years. With luck, the solar panels will last 15 years. The electric utility only has to pay you the wholesale rate for electricity. But, when you use electricity, you have to pay the retail rate.
er... that's what most people with solar panels on their roof are already doing.
It's a long term proposal, the returns are not immediate.
No! It's an involved affair, the production of energy! And is regulated at the highest levels of bureaucracy.
Hypothetically speaking (I'm still in college and I'm broke), would it be possible to make a decent return on investment by buying solar panels and selling the energy generated to the national grid? I'm sort of presuming that the answer is 'no', because everyone would be doing it otherwise... but why not?
Thanks
