gloat

[goddessfarmer]

Last Month's electric bill: $300
This Month's electric Bill $75
at current electric rates, payoff is 44.4 years. But then if you take into account not loosing food, having the house freeze and burst pipes, peace of mind, etc when the grid goes down.....
So, if we have one multi-day outage per year (which isn't unusual around here) and estimate that the freezer has $1000 worth of meat in it, that reduces the payoff time to 32.4 years.
That's still not taking into account that once every 5 years we have a significant outage in cold weather which could cause frozen pipes and $10,000 in damage.... so if that happened even once, that knocks it down to 29.7 years.
And if the price of electricity goes up, which I can't imagine it not doing, even by .5% a year on average..... OK, now I need a spreadsheet and not a tiny piece of scrap paper, so I'm going to stop with the math.

My point here, is that this system is highly likely to pay for itself before I die, so long as I live to a natural expected age. Which I fully intend to do, damn-it.

Photovoltaics for the win.

Comments

[radioactiverich.livejournal.com]

Do you know if New Hampster has a SREC system? For us that knocked down the break-even date considerably.

[goddessfarmer.livejournal.com]

What is SREC? I haven't heard of that. Of course, it's unlikely for NH to do anything that might cost the state $$.

[radioactiverich.livejournal.com]

SREC == Solar Renewable Energy Certificate

It looks like I may have answered my own question here: http://www.srectrade.com/background.php

[deguspice.livejournal.com]

SRECs = Solar Renewable Energy Certificates

Some states require power companies to buy carbon credits from people with solar panels.

In NH, they'll pay up to a max of $160 per megawatt generated. (In Massachusetts the range is $300 - $560). You can read more about SRECs in NH at:

http://www.srectrade.com/new_hampshire_srec.php

I use Knollwoodenergy.com to deal with the SRECs, but they don't list New Hampshire on their website.

[intuition-ist.livejournal.com]

so... total initial cost of the system is ~$100k?

[goddessfarmer.livejournal.com]

120K roughly. I didn't count the cost of the little system I put in the new barn (another 12K) because that's about how much it would have cost to get grid power to that barn, so it paid for itself the day it first pumped water.

[terryo.livejournal.com]

Does your ROI numbers include replacing batteries periodically??

[goddessfarmer.livejournal.com]

It doesn't, but that's likely a wash with all of the other things on the plus side that I didn't count.

[moechus.livejournal.com]

Are there any tax incentives for installing solar?

[goddessfarmer.livejournal.com]

Yes, I have been told that I can deduct a certain portion of the cost of installation of what I owe to the IRS. I don't have the numbers on that yet, the accountant is working on them. It was my understanding that that particular tax credit was going to expire after the 2011 tax year, however.