This Old House

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.