Why Solar Power Makes Sense for Small Business

Solar power doesn’t have to be for large corporations that can seemingly toss an array on the roof without impacting the budget. Since the middle of 2012, the manufacturing costs of solar panels and equipment have begun to decrease and the innovative developments of more efficient technologies have increased. Since solar cells can be installed piece at a time, small businesses could implement this technology in order to become more sustainable. There are a variety of reasons why this implementation can be ideal.

1. Inexpensive – Implementing solar power within your small business doesn’t have to be as expensive as you may think. In fact, small units can be installed for less than $200 that can power a variety of objects including lights. These small units can then be tied together one at a time in conjunction with deep cell batteries to begin building your independent system. Once you have the money for an inverter, you can start powering the larger aspects of your business including computers and servers.

2. Reducing Utility Bills – Even a $5,000 setup for the small business could eliminate several kilowatts of power from your energy bills. In that respect, the small kits mentioned above could begin to cut into them as well. If you are able to perform the installation yourself, the equipment for photovoltaic energy is quite inexpensive if you use eBay or other liquidation sites. For $1,000, you could easily pick up more than 1 kilowatt worth of panels – which is about a fifth of the power needed for a small home.

3. Marketing – By marketing your business as an eco-friendly one, you could gain quit a bit of respect in your community. Even if you don’t believe in global warming or “green” technologies, others do. It’s all about placating to your target consumer base. In larger cities, this could be greatly beneficial and your marketing campaign could have a large amount of success.

4. Community – While this could tie in with your marketing campaign above, you could show your community that you are giving back to them. By taking less power to operate your establishment, you are leaving more power to the surrounding community. In a rural location, this could greatly help in reducing the amount of brownouts that the area may frequently experience. In fact, some co-operative power companies may even pay your business for feeding power back into the grid.

5. Tax Credits – While the above reasons should be more than enough to encourage any business owner to look closer at solar power, Federal tax credits are also available on the corporate level for those looking into aspects of energy conservation. There are quite a few possibilities for these credits and this could greatly help businesses reduce the amount of money needed to stay open in tax revenues. You should also look closer at these benefits for some cities and counties will offer tax breaks as well for those utilizing solar power.

Depending on the actual income of the small business, budgeting for solar implementation may be difficult. Not every business has the funding to put into complete sustainability. Even if each piece can be obtained slowly over time, the small business could eventually achieve energy independence and remove itself from the grid entirely. The benefits to implementing solar power should at least drive a business owner to look at the possibilities, even if it’s on a small scale at first.

Ken Myers is the founder of http://www.longhornleads.com/ & has learned over the years the importance of focusing on what the customer is looking for and literally serving it to them. He doesn’t try to create a need, instead he tries to satisfy the existing demand for information on products and services.