Perhaps the easiest alternative energy source to power your home comes from above on a daily basis: welcome to solar energy.

Solar panels around Island homes is becoming a popular sight. Simply put, solar energy is energy from the Sun in the form of heat and light, says Wikipedia.

This energy drives the climate and weather and supports virtually all life on Earth.

Heat and light from the Sun, along with secondary solar resources such as wind and wave power, hydroelectricity and biomass, account for more than 99.9% of the available flow of renewable energy on Earth.

To highlight the effectiveness of using solar power, sustainable lifestyle group Greenrock has highlighted one example of solar's cost-saving potential on its website www.greenrock.org.

Greenrock last month was invited to view a solar-powered house in Shelly Bay. The house has a large solar array and a small wind turbine.

On a sunny day the equipment can generate six kilowatts of power, enough to power a good-sized family home, even including air conditioning units.

As a result, the household's BELCO bill has dropped from more than $500 per month to about $100 a month and the owner now has plans to install a more efficient electric stove and additional panels to remove the remainder of the bill.

The system also has batteries as a back-up, providing two or three days of power in the event of a hurricane or power outage.

While the total amount of homes using solar power in Bermuda is currently not clear, more than 10,000 families in the US get all of their electricity from solar power.

And silicon from just one ton of sand, used in photovoltaic cells, the process which transfers solar energy to electricity, could produce as much electricity as burning 500,000 tons of coal.

However, while it is effective, solar power can be expensive. Solar power systems make a different kind of electricity than big power plants do, resulting in different wiring being needed which can be an expense within itself, according to US experts.

The costs are driven up because of the difficulty and expense to make sufficient electricity using photovoltaics.

The panels can cost a Bermuda homeowner thousands of dollars and require a large amount of open land — very expensive by Bermuda's standards.