If you've ever wondered whether it's feasible for you to go solar, or go wind-power, or combine/compare the two, now you can find out without having to hire an expert.

The California Energy Commission has come out with a fantastic tool: Clean Power Estimator. It's a website where you can enter your zip code and find out what it would be like to install solar PV or wind power at your house or your office building / factory.

The program gives you a quick initial answer by making certain assumptions about the size of the installation, what your monthly utility bills are, how you'll pay for the system, etc.; however, all these inputs are listed so you can tweak them to your heart's content. The program shows you how much energy you'd generate per month compared to how much you use, shows the financial costs in several different ways (and costs deferred by government tax incentives are also shown), It even shows you a little graphic of how much space the desired number of solar panels would take up on your roof. There's an amazing amount of expertise packed into this little app.

Unfortunately, it seems to not work with Mozilla, so Windows folks will have to use IE.