What year do you remember as the first time it was “cool” (no pun intended) to have solar? As far back as 20 years ago, slapping big shiny solar panels on your roof, put you in a small group of people who shared a strange new status symbol. For many Arizona residents, power from the sun seemed at first to be the best idea since air conditioning.  Yet the interest in solar seemed to wane almost as fast as a winter in Phoenix. Why is that? You might think Arizona would naturally be the leader in solar power in the USA. With sunshine almost every day, and plenty of land available, we really should be. The fact is New Jersey leads the nation in solar power production, with Arizona coming in at the third place mark. It is the goal of Kal Kapur, CEO of Diversified Solar LLC, to change that and he intends to do it by making Arizona residents and businesses aware of the “hot” new environmental benefits and cost-savings that solar power can now offer. Benefits that may eventually put Arizona in the solar power lead, right where Kal feels we should be.

Kapur says that the main reason that solar power is not as popular as it should be is because people do not know about all of the cost-savings short and long term benefits, since the information is confusing and not readily available to the average consumer. For example, when solar cells first became available for residential and small business use, they were much less efficient. Today solar is less expensive than conventional electricity in most of the rest of the world, not to mention you get to hold your head high with all the “green” bragging rights that come with installing them. There are so many incentives out there that make solar affordable, but people just don’t know about them. “People know very little about the incentives, but once they do and they see the savings they begin bragging to their friends. Usually, the only people who see [the savings available] are the CPAs and tax people, but really it’s affordable to everyone,” says Kapur. There has never been a better time to go solar and maximize your energy savings while at the same time creating sustainable energy sources and even reducing those pesky greenhouse gases that so many people are up in arms over.