Do you have 1 million saved for retirement? May not be enough.

[badtoworse]

242. Solar has gotten a lot less expensive and is worth looking into.

If you live in a house that is a good candidate (south facing roof, not shaded by trees) and in a state that has renewable energy requirements (requirements that utilities obtain a certain percentage of their electricity from renewable sources), you might be able to sign a deal with a company at no cost to you to supply you electricity at a discount to what you would pay the utility. I looked into this for my house, but I would have had to cut down some trees that I really liked and the solar company said that if they paid for the trees it would eat up their profits. Either way, it was deal breaker.

I would also contact your electric utility to see if they have any incentive programs for installing solar and also see what state and federal tax credits might be available to help finance your system.

If you're technically inclined and are interested in owning the system yourself, you can go to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory ("NREL&quot and use their PVWatts program to estimate how much electricity a system on your house might produce.

http://www.nrel.gov/rredc/pvwatts/

Once you know that the size and expected production of your system, you can get quotes from local installers as to cost. You need to look at your electric bills and estimate how much you'd save on energy from the local utility. At that point, you're in a position to decide if you'll save enough money to make the purchase worthwhile. Talk to few solar installers in your area - a lot of them will do this work for you. Also check references - you'll need the system to operate reliably for many years to make the investment pay, so you want it done by an installer that does quality work.

I wouldn't recommend going totally off-grid. It can be done and some people do it, but I think that if you do, you'd be taking on problems that most people don't want to deal with, like limiting your use of electricity if it's cloudy. In any case,designing and installing a solar PV system is a job for a professional. An improperly designed or installed system can be a fire hazard or can jeopardize line crews working to restore service during a power outage.

My expertise is really with utility scale power generation and residential solar isn't my specialty.

Hope this gets you started.