13 Best Solar Companies in Lancaster, NY (Sep 2022 Review)

The Cost and Benefits of Solar in Lancaster

For lots of homeowners, whether or not you should invest in a solar energy system comes down to the cost. Some significant things that impact the cost and possible savings include:

• Your location: This influences the average daily sunlight your roof gets, which helps determine how many panels you need.
• Incentives: Something that can reduce the cost of your solar project is the solar investment tax credit (ITC), which is a tax credit that lets you deduct from your taxes a percentage of the project cost. You can also save a decent amount of money on your power bills, which can give you an average of $13,000 of savings over 20 years.
• Your current power bills: Solar panels can substantially lower, or totally eradicate, your utility bills. In Lancaster, you can save an average of $51 a month.
• Choice of solar panels: The kind of solar panels you buy will affect your total cost. High-efficiency monocrystalline panels will cost more 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.

Due to solar panels now being cheaper than ever as well as various solar incentives, they are a solid investment for many homeowners.

Solar Incentives in Lancaster

In an effort to increase the adoption of solar power, federal, state and local governments — and even some utility companies — offer incentives to help make switching to solar power more economical and accessible. No matter what state you live in, you can take advantage of the federal Solar Investment Tax Credit (ITC), which will let you claim 30% of how much your solar project cost on your tax return, lowering the amount of taxes you owe that year. In addition, there may be some local incentives that stack with the ITC too. You can find out about the incentives you can use in the table below.

Environmental Impact of Switching to Solar in Lancaster

There are many reasons to trade traditional energy for solar energy, like saving on electricity bills and helping to reduce your carbon footprint. You may be curious — how much does making the switch do for the planet anyway? The more energy you use, the the more the environment will benefit when you switch to solar since you won't need to burn as many fossil fuels. While solar panel manufacturing emits carbon dioxide, the panels make up for it by considerably reducing the amount of CO2 you would have been responsible for if you still used nonrenewable energy. In Lancaster, you can reduce your carbon footprint by 20 pounds a year with solar panels. For people who are concerned about the environment, the upfront cost of solar is a small price to pay for offsetting your carbon emissions.