Energy...

Thinking about putting solar panels on your house, but not sure how effective they'll be? RoofRay has an answer.

This great online tool uses Google Maps to calculate the amount of energy that you will likely be able to collect by placing solar panels on the roof of your house or business.

RoofRay is incredibly simple to use. You put in your address, and it pulls up a satellite image of your house or business from Google Earth. Once that image appears, you click on the corners of your roof, and the RoofRay system calculates the approximate square footage of your rooftop. Then you drag a small indicator to tell the calculator which direction your roof slants. RoofRay already knows how much sun your part of the country gets, so its calculators do the rest.

According to my test of the system (which took all of 45 seconds), putting solar panels on my house could generate up to 11,000 watts of electricity at peak performance.

RoofRay also tells me which months will be the best for my solar panels (obviously, December and January won't be ideal). Next, it tells me how much I can expect to save on my electric bills each month of the year. Finally, it estimates the costs of my solar panels, deducts likely state and federal rebates or tax credits, and tells me how much the panels will cost or save me over their anticipated 25-year life.

According to RoofRay, installing solar panels will cost me about $100,000 to start, but create a net positive cash flow of more than $88,000 over 25 years. That's a pretty good illustration of the effectiveness of solar power.

RoofRay won't connect you with contractors to install your solar panels, but if you're just looking for information, this could be the first step toward your energy independence.