cost efficient living
I have been thinking a lot lately about the energy crisis and our wallet draining window air conditioners. My research has taught me that a $30k install of solar panels should be enough to power your entire house and send the excess back to the city for a cash credit. Time for Math…
My house is dirt old and energy bills at peak times upwards of $300 a month and at the low times about $180 per month. If I financed solar panels for my house my monthly payment would be about $285 per month, but I wouldn’t have to pay a monthly electricity bill and the extra amount would actually make money from the electric company (I have not been able to find any details about what kind of credit you get). So over the course of the year the solar panels would probably cost you a little bit more not including the unknown credit amount. Of course I would need the resources available to finance this deal.
A much greater option is putting solar panels on new build houses. I’m going to assume that the cost of installing solar panels during the build of a house would reduce the price of the panels and installation by 25%, so instead of paying $30k for the panels you are only paying $22.5k. But you still gotta pay for it, right? But when you amortize that into the price of a house you see a huge difference, the cost of a $220k mortgage for 30 years at 6.5% is $1390.55 but the payment on a similar mortgage for $242k is $1529.60 at a difference of only $139.05 and you never have to pay an electricity bill. Once you sell that house and someone else buys it the actual cost of those solar panels have completely disappeared.
This seems like a no-brainer to me, and I just can’t figure out why we are not seeing this in practice. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Not to mention the tax benefits on the state and federal level and the cash rebate program that the State of Minnesota runs.
-Josh
17 Jun 2008 8:32 pm
Hire hamsters to run in wheels to produce energy
it worked for bugs bunny
18 Jun 2008 8:02 am
For a place like MN where our sunlight is pretty thin for half the year, Wind power is somewhat more effective. There are a lot of new consumer-scale wind generators available for exactly this kind of need, and they are somewhat cheaper than solar.
Ideally, you would have both installed, since when the sun is out it is usually not very windy, and vice-versa.
I really agree with your second point. That more new development does not include some kind of distributed power generation saddens me.
The optimist in me is saying that we are just at the very beginning of the renewable power upswing, so we should see lots more in the coming years. The pessimist in me says that it is taking far too long to make any real difference.
18 Jun 2008 8:55 am
From what I have read you sell the excess power back to the power company at the same rate that you are paying for their power.
Even with the sunlight dimmed during half of the year you still will produce enough power to be cost effective.
You could also get a small scale wind generator for around $600. I believe the average output is around 400 watts
01 Jul 2008 4:04 pm
Listen. You need to do the most awesome thing [. . .] and using the word amortize was pretty good.