solar panel payoff

Ok, I have all the information I need to figure out a pretty accurate total pay off time for my solar panels. Unfortunately to make it actually accurate would require a ton of data mining and calculations. So instead of that I'm going to do a quick and dirty approximation.

The 6.72kWh system cost $42672.
Xcel bought 20 years of my carbon credits for $23520 in the form of a rebate off the total price.
Then I paid the $19152 that was left.

I received $5444 in tax credit in 2009.
I received $5188 in tax credit in 2010.
I'll receive $3334 in tax credit in 2011 unless something changes.
And I hope to receive approximately $1111 in 2012.

I will get about $20 per year back from Xcel for generating more electricity than I use and letting them fuck me up the ass with a barbed pole for it.

Now the simplistic part of this calculation. I checked and my average power bill now is about $50 less per month than my average power bill was before I got the solar installed. While this is true, it's not really a very accurate assessment of the solar panels effect on my power bills. But until I do the work to mine all of the rest of the data required, we'll settle with that.

So...assuming I get this year and next years projected tax credits, and using the simplistic power bill difference above the out of pocket cost of these solar panels for me is going to be about $4000. So it will pay for itself in about 6.5 years. In that 6.5 years I will never pay for electricity on my power bill. (I will pay for electricity because I have to pay for what I use, then Xcel pays for what I generate, then charges twice what they pay me to someone else for the power I generated. It really is a giant FUCK YOU from Xcel.)

6.5 years total. 5.2 years from now. March 2016. Then I'll get another 13.5 years of solar power generation out of the system. Sure the system will slowly degrade, but they guarantee it'll be generating at least 85% of the power it generates now in 20 years, they actually expect it'll be generating more than 90% of it's rating at install for 25 years. And unless I begin using significantly more electricity than I currently do during that time, I'll never have to pay for electricity on my power bill.

Now...being the geek that I am, and having figured out that I'm not calculating this quite correctly, it's likely sometime this year I'll get annoyed with that and be bored and I'll end up data mining my power bills and doing a bunch of more accurate calculations.

And speaking of using more power...I'm planning on buying an EV next year, so that'll take up a crapload of power, and of course it'll never be plugged in during the day so that'll kill the balance. Of course I'm also intending to continue making my house more energy efficient and if I can figure out how to do it I'll be installing solar thermal and more solar panels. If I can find a way to do it I'll be installing a big assed storage system so that I store the excess power I generate during the day to use at night, but Xcel is kinda pissy about that so I'm not sure how I'll do it even if I can come up with the money. Which is considerable.

So that's some damned good news in my opinion, and hopefully will help convince some more people to invest in putting solar on their house. Especially since the panels you can get now are already much better than the ones I've got.

Solar financing

I have no solid numbers for this, just vague assumptions based on looking at REC Solars page about Solar financing and what I've talked with my mortgage guy about in the past. So...this is my preliminary financing plan....

The 8kW REC system is going to cost me about $26,000 (probably a bit less, I'm not sure how much the monitor I want costs yet). I can get about $23,000 out of a home equity loan because I haven't owned the house long and because the housing market is tanked so bad at the moment. So I'm going to get the largest home equity loan I can get, then finance about $150/month worth of additional loan. That should be enough extra money to finish doing a few other things around the house like putting in a sidewalk and stairs, finishing the electrical, dealing with the walnut tree, etc.

So that's my current plan, now to see if I can make that work. Then I'll be in a tight financial situation for about 9 months and then I should be ok again. It'll mean I'm back to paying for my house for 30 years, and it might mean that I have to take a non-fixed loan which I really dislike, but all of that is fixable in the future as long as I'm clever and attentive. I intend to be both of those. heh.

If that all works, I'm quite a ways down my list of things to do for the house. In fact, I'd be down to doing almost luxury sorts of things. Solar hot water heater (if I can even do that with PV on the house), hot tub, furniture, audio/video update...really pretty much just luxury items. Oh...and getting an electric heating/cooling system for the house...hopefully a heat exchanger/dehydrator for cooling and type 2 radiant heat for heating. Oh yeah! And more insulation and weather proofing of the whole house...but I don't think that'll be very expensive, more just work intensive.

I need to find a good general contractor/handyman kind of person. Well...really I should just learn how to do all this stuff myself. But for me to feel comfortable doing that I'd want someone competent to teach me, and that doesn't seem to be an option unless I start flying my dad out here every few months for a couple of years.