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 taxes.

One of the steps in this process that I've sort of doubted all along was the claimed tax refund from installing the solar. Well, I did my taxes and wow was I surprised. Not only did I get several thousand dollars back from my taxes for installing solar but I have an even larger hold over for next year because my deductions were too large. So I get a huge return this year (which is very good since it's going to save my ass) and next year I get a bigger than normal return.

At this point my total outlay for the installation is going to be about $13,500 for a 6.72Kwh system. Then I'll get another chunk back for it next year, probably dropping the total price to around somewhere around $11,000. I won't know for a while yet exactly what my payoff period will be for the system, but at the very least it's making it so that my hot tub increase in power use is offset. During the summer I expect to generate quite a bit more power than I use, even with the hot tub, and I intend to make the hot tub significantly more energy efficient before next winter.

So all in all, I would guess that I'll have this entire installation paid off in about 7 years, so then I should have about 13 years of profit from it before I have to replace it.