re: #245 Backwoods_Sleuth

We didn’t look at the financial payoff aspect as much as we did the convenience factor, because the power goes off here all the time (seriously, if a bird pisses on a wire, the power goes out).
We have a gas-powered generator but it’s a real pain and, of course, you have to buy gas for it, and it’s noisy and it stinks.
Also, since the electric bill is usually our biggest household expense, it will be nice to seriously cut that down as we head into our retirement years.
Plus, hubs and I have always been alternative energy geeks, so it’s like a hobby that has an inherent value in and of itself.
Prices are really dropping now. I think we have about $2-3,000 invested so far. Oh, and the panels are American-made, which is nice.

We’re on a fairly solid power grid, so we’re lucky there. Didn’t lose any power during Sandy, knock on formica.

It’s been a while since I’ve done an estimate, but the rig I was looking at would have covered our roof at $45,000, way out of our price range. There were a bunch of state and fed incentives that would have cut that back a bit, but it was still a massive outlay.

I also calculated our yearly kWh total and plugged them into some online estimators. The savings in electric use wasn’t quite what I was hoping for.

I get suckered in by stories of people who put in solar and then pay off their house in 5 years. I’m sure most of them are apocryphal. Still, it would be cool to use the sun to cut down on our energy bills.