Greening Your Home - Solar help!

Ok in my own way of saving the planet and some cash my wife and I decided to go solar. Not as a only but as an offset to the bill.
My question is this I live in eastern pa and I am looking for someone to help me complete this task. I understand the inital costs are large but I am prepared for that and need to find a company to give me an evaluation of sorts to let me know my potential savings.
I have heard of people actually getting checks from the electric company during the summer to offset winter bills.
We are comitted to make this work I just need the resources to get me started. I have looked online and just get frustrated.
Any help would be great Thanks in advance.:D

http://www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/decision_tools.html

On this web page you will see Database for States Incentives on Renewable Energy. Click on your state and a list will come up showing all the incentives in your state for solar.

We are on Xcel Energy here in colorado and are able to participate in their grid-tie rebate and net metering programs. We tied our arrays to the grid (one for the business on our property and one one for the house) and through their $4.50/watt rebate program plus the federal tax credits, the home array (30% fed tax credit to $2k) cost about $3k out of pocket and the business array (30% fed tax credit no cap) cost less than $500. On a sunny day like today we can crank out over 4kWH at any given moment. Because I am 1099 and pay lots of taxes each year, we saw the savings within 5 months. Plus the $60k worth of equipment added to the property can't be included on our property taxes! We had a professional installer take care of everything - you write over the rebate check to them but if the energy company drags their feet on issuing that rebate check, you aren't "paying" for that. Plus the install is covered under warranty and you know all the paperwork is someone else's headache.

Note that if you decide to go off grid the cost of the system skyrockets due to the cost of the battery backup to run stuff at night. Our power goes out semi-often in winter but a natural gas generator was less expensive plus it doesn't have to be maintained or changed out every so many months like batteries. There is a price point where batteries are less expensive but I don't recall what it is.

Long and short of it - call your local energy provider and ask what programs they offer. Also call your city, county, and state agencies to see what they offer - some local governments offer tax or other incentives.

Good luck!

Start here for figuring out available incentives for PA (and fed -- $2k tax credit)

http://dsireusa.org/library/includes/map2.cfm?CurrentPageID=1&State=PA&RE=1&EE=1

More generally, http://dsireusa.org/

To find contractors, start with

http://www.findsolar.com

If you want to get into estimating electricity production, check out the tools from the National Renewable Energy Lab,

http://www.pvwatt.com

and if you really want to get into it, the Solar Advisor Model

https://www.nrel.gov/analysis/sam/

Xiphias, thanks so much for great information!

You should contact a super moderator and get this posted as a sticky. (It would also be great, since there is no mod, here, if you'd consider that position :D )

Connie

Additional Solar Info:

USA Department Of Energy Home Page:
http://www.eere.energy.gov/

The Solar Energy Technologies Program:
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/solar/

Earth Day Home Page. Learn How To Save Energy and Resources Here:

http://www.energy.gov/
(Two Pages. Click Next Button on The Right Hand Side Of First Page)

Text Version Here:
http://www.energy.gov/text_version.htm