This Old House

[calzephyr]

We went to the home and garden show in February, and while we collected plenty of names and ideas, haven't pinned one down for this year. Some things will have to wait until we don't have birds, like new cupboards or carpet. There is a residential solar power calculator that is intriguing though! We do get a lot of sun and now that we're home all the time, we use about 800kwh per billing period. We have appliances on timers and try to be mindful of energy usage as good children of the 70s energy crisis, but between infrastructure and administration fees, we can't seem to keep the power bill down. Pretty soon we'll be able to turn the furnace off and that should save some bucks.

The solar calculator guestimates:

Optimal number of panels 11
Solar generation 4143 kWh/year
Installation costs $10,780.00

2.36 metric tonnes carbon dioxide abated annually
0.51 Passenger cars taken off the road for 1 year
61 tree seedlings grown for 10 years

Apparently you can also lease a system, which would pay us back $16.53 a month.

The Canadian prairies are a very sunny place, but I'm not sure it would pay off. We plan on living in our house until we die, so maybe? Or maybe just even getting some panels may inspire the neighbours to check out solar too.

Comments

[ladythmpr]

Solar might not "pay off" but getting that credit instead of a hundreds of dollars bill every month (even after factoring the gas which heats our house and water) is pretty amazing, especially when you've been "your residence uses more energy that similar residences" household for the past 15 years (we run servers, and a number of other always-running things, and we've almost always had someone at home all the time, "working" or not). We're also no longer at the mercy of rolling brown-or-blackouts when our power grid is overworked.

[calzephyr]

LOL I thought it was just us that consistently got the "your residence uses more energy that similar residences" on the bill! We have a NAS and it runs full-time.

Do you have solar?

I talked to hubs and apparently solar panels interfere with the amateur radio antennas, so it's not an option alas.

[ladythmpr]

Yes we had it put in in the fall, and it became operational in February, IIRC. It WAS a learning curve. For example, in order to have enough battery power after the sun sets, we CAN NOT run our electric dryer after 5pm. But worth it, even if our power company calls us "selfish" for not paying into "community green power alternatives." Selfish indeed, when they don't maintain their lines, and then shut off power so the lines don't cause fires.