15 Best Solar Companies in Needham, MA (Jul 2022 Review)

The Cost and Benefits of Solar in Needham

The cost of installing a solar panel system has gone down greatly in the past few years, but it's still a significant investment for most homeowners. There are quite a few factors you should consider when trying to determine costs and your potential savings, such as:

• Choice of solar panels: The type of solar panels you get will affect your total cost. High-efficiency monocrystalline panels are more expensive upfront but can also save you more money over the lifetime of your system. If you don't need to maximize efficiency, you can go with a higher number of more affordable panels.
• The amount of sunlight your roof gets: This, and how your roof is set up, affects affect how much energy your solar panels can generate.
• Incentives: The federal solar investment tax credit, which everyone in the U.S. is eligible for, lets you deduct 26% of the cost of your solar system installation from your federal taxes. Additionally, not including incentives, you can save about $22,000 over 20 years on your energy bills.
• Energy consumption: Installing a solar system may be too pricey an investment for households that don't consume a lot of energy per month.

So is buying solar panels worth it? Whether you hope to decrease your electric bills, carbon dioxide emissions or both, solar panels are a worthwhile investment for many Needham homeowners.

Solar Incentives in Needham

Since solar power is more sustainable than burning fossil fuels, there are some government incentives in place to encourage its adoption. Regardless of where you live, you can take advantage of the federal Solar Investment Tax Credit (ITC), which lets you claim 26% of how much you paid for your solar installation on your tax return, lowering the amount of taxes you owe that year. Plus, there may be some local incentives that can save you some extra money too. You can learn about the incentives available to you in the table below.

Environmental Impact of Switching to Solar in Needham

If you're planning on adding solar panels to your home, one of the primary reasons why may be to reduce your greenhouse gas emissions. You may be asking yourself — how much do solar panels do for the planet anyway? As reported by the EPA, electricity production is the second greatest source of greenhouse gas emissions and about 62% of our electricity is generated by burning fossil fuels. Using solar power can help lower that statistic in a city like Needham that accounts for a fair amount of carbon dioxide emissions each year. Because solar panels don't release greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere when creating electricity, they're a good trade for nonrenewable energy sources. In fact, you could reduce your carbon dioxide emissions by about 40 pounds each year. As you can see, using solar power has so many other perks outside of saving money. One of the primary ones is that you can help save the planet too.