Renewable energy is on the rise in the world with more and more people realizing the incredible benefits of it. The most easily accessible form of renewable energy for an average homeowner is solar. Some homeowners have embraced solar energy as a cost-effective way to power their home, while others are skeptical of its advantages, especially when they know they’ll be moving out at some point. If you’re planning to move soon or at least certain you’ll be moving in the future, is solar really worth it?

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Saving Money

Who doesn’t love finding new ways to cut bills and keep more of that good green stuff in your pocket? Many solar enthusiasts claim solar panels will save you tons of money. Do those claims actually hold any weight? Turns out, they do. Even if you’re planning to move out of your home and on to bigger and better things, investing in solar panels will save you money while you’re still living there. While the amount of money you can save depends largely on the number of direct sunlight hours your home sees, the size and angle of your roof, and local electricity rates, there’s no doubt you’ll get some savings, especially when the average American family spends more than $1,400 a year on energy. So depending on the particulars of your location and current energy spending, you can estimate your savings around $50 a month, and you’d be seeing those savings on day one.

Some homeowners have embraced solar energy as a cost-effective way to power their home, while others are skeptical of its advantages, especially when they know they’ll be moving out at some point.

For a more precise estimate, you can visit websites like CostofSolar.com for easy ways to calculate exactly how much you could save by installing solar panels at your home.

Increasing Your Home's Value

It’s no secret that increasing the value of your home will help it sell more quickly, and it’s arguably one of the most important things to do on your pre-move list. You want to get the most return on your home, so you can think of solar panel investment like any other home upgrade designed to make your house more attractive on the market. A study performed in California estimated that every 1-kilowatt of solar energy increases a home’s resale value by nearly $6,000. To put that into perspective, a small 3.1 kW system could add around $18,000 to the value of a medium-sized home. While this doesn’t directly apply to Ohio, you can safely assume your resale value will increase at least by the thousands through solar investment. That money will definitely come in handy, especially when you’re looking at budgeting for your new home.

Reducing Your Carbon Footprint

Money isn’t the only thing you’ll save when you move to solar. If you’re concerned about CO2 emissions and environmental causes, this may be the biggest reason of all to make the switch. There’s a rather complicated mathematical conversion formula that’ll help you determine what your reductions would look like based on your particular situation, but it’s much easier to look at it this way: A 5kW system, which is the average size of a solar panel installation in the US, reduces carbon emissions by 4.9 metric tons a year. A vehicle produces 4.7 metric tons of carbon emissions per year. So you would essentially be offsetting the carbon emissions of one vehicle every year. Not too shabby.

Though solar panel installation carries a substantial price tag (the cost of a 5kW system can go anywhere between $10,000 and $13,000), it’s important to note the rising prices of traditional energy sources offer other incentives to move to solar. With all the benefits and gains you’d see from solar, at the end of the day, your deciding factor will probably come down to how much electricity costs in your area, and how much you could save by switching, either partially or completely, to solar.