...AND CHEAPER...:

 I had heard for years that solar power was a luxury item for hippies and rich liberals. But after doing some research, I learned that the price of solar panels had decreased 80 percent since 2008. Even more surprising, I discovered that I didn't have to spend a huge sum of money upfront to buy solar panels anymore--instead, I could lease them.

It's easy to forget that few homes or businesses in the United States had electricity until a century ago. Thomas Edison debuted his electric lighting in Manhattan in 1882, but it didn't come to most rural areas until the 1930s. Wherever electricity arrived, it quickly changed from novelty to necessity.

One of the reasons that people loved electricity was that it was "clean." They no longer had to rely on kerosene or gas lamps, both of which burned fuel and produced unhealthy amounts of smoke and soot inside of buildings. Although electricity was primarily produced by coal-fired generators, one could site them far away from where the light was needed. Edison's invention, powered by fossil fuels, illuminated the world.

Solar power languished throughout most of the 20th century, but as billions of people adopted electricity, it became apparent by that we could no longer afford to use our skies and water as our dumping grounds. Decades of research and development by scientists and engineers has finally produced cost-effective solar panels that can power our activities without the huge impact on our planet.

When I began my solar-power journey, the first question I faced was: Should I buy, or should I lease? The way solar leasing works is that a company installs panels on your roof. Rather than paying for the panels themselves, you are charged for the electricity they generate. (The exact way this works depends on the agreement you sign. In some cases, you're charged for all the electricity the system generates, and the extra that goes into the grid generates a credit from the local utility company to lower your bill. In other cases, you are charged a fixed fee from the solar company regardless of how much energy your panels produce.) In many cities across the United States, the solar electricity rate is actually lower than what you'd pay on your regular utility bills. So I could save money and reduce pollution by leasing solar panels? It sounded like a no-brainer.

The next step was deciding which solar company to choose. I stumbled across a TED Talk from Sungevity co-founder Danny Kennedy that was so inspiring that I bought his book, Rooftop Revolution. And since Sungevity headquarters in Oakland, California, are close to where I went to graduate school, I felt a special kinship with them.

Before signing a lease, I decided to do a little more investigation, just to be thorough. First I had a couple of local solar companies come to my house, climb up on the roof, and design a system to fit my budget. Then I stumbled across a neighborhood co-op in Washington that organizes bulk solar purchases to save homeowners money. Suddenly, buying solar panels started to look even more attractive than leasing--with a 30 percent federal tax credit, renewable energy credits, and additional savings as part of a group purchase, I would only pay a fraction of the upfront cost of solar. After I told my neighbors about this deal, four of them joined the bulk purchase.

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