Since the system costs in Florida are well over $20,000 on average before incentives, most residents will of course be looking for ways to keep their costs low when switching to solar energy. There are a handful of things that we recommend you do to save money:
- Apply for the federal tax credit
- Take advantage of local incentives
- Pass battery systems
Apply for the federal tax credit
First, make sure that you are taking advantage of the federal solar tax credit. This is one of the best tax credits available, and all you have to do is file some additional paperwork with your taxes.
The ITC is 30% of your total system price, including the costs for modules, battery inverters and the installation costs for solar modules. The average loan in Florida is $ 8, 729, so this can significantly reduce your effective cost of solar panels.
Take advantage of local incentives
Secondly, if you live in Jacksonville, Boynton Beach or Dunedin, you can take advantage of some local solar incentives to reduce the cost of solar panels:
- Jacksonville offers discounts of up to $ 2,000 if you install a solar battery
- Boynton Beach offers discounts of up to $ 1,500 for the installation of a PV system with an efficiency of over 17.5% (including most monocrystalline modules, but polycrystalline modules and other types of solar panels may not qualify)
- Dunedin has a grant program that offers discounts of up to $2,500 for the energy generated with their system
Most residents in FL will have Duke Energy as their electricity company. Duke only offers a cashback incentive for conducting an energy audit on your home and for installing an electric vehicle (EV) charger.5.6 This will not lower your solar conversion costs, but it can help improve the energy efficiency of your home while saving money.
Pass battery systems
In addition, we recommend passing on solar batteries (for now) if your budget is tight. Energy storage systems (solar batteries) can be great in Florida because the risk of power outages is so high due to the frequent extreme weather. As such, they increase the value of your property when combined with solar panels for residential buildings. However, we believe that in most cases they are not yet worth the additional costs.
You will pay thousands more for batteries, and you will not save them much more in the long run. This is mainly because Florida mandates Net Metering and the Net Metering program requires that your excess energy be credited at the retail price. Batteries will not help you to keep energy costs low, as Net Metering will already do this for you.
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