A recent study in California found that having a rooftop solar power system installed significantly increased the value of homes.
No surprise right? But the interesting thing was that the sale value of the homes with solar power increased by about the cost of installing the system – even though the original home owner had already made some of that money back through the electricity generated, and (since solar panels do have a limited life), the purchaser would arguably receive a better return on their money by buying a house without solar power and installing a new solar array.
What was also interesting was that a solar array did not increase the value of a new home as much as it did an existing home – which is again counter-intuitive, since in a new home the solar panels are presumably also new and have their whole 25-30 years of high performance ahead of them.
The report is available here (pdf – 838 KB), and comes from the US Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Solar Energy Technologies Program, U.S. Department of Energyat
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