We are increasingly more interested in the value of home solar power.  But a robust solar electric system can cost up to $20,000.  Most homeowner’s wonder how long it will take to see some ROI.  Here is one homeowner’s story:

My Solar Hot Water System has been on line for one year now.  I thought I’d post some results on the energy savings thus far:

Before the solar hot water system was installed, we used on average 32 kWh/day.  This is a three year average and it was pretty consistant.  Now that we generate most of our hot water by solar instead of electricity, our average useage for the last 12 months has been 23 kWh/day.  You might say, big deal… 9 kWh per day.  We are now paying ¢18.3/kWh.  Therefore 9 kWh x 365 days is 3285 kWh or at our current electrical rate, $601.16.  This puts it right in the range I was expecting and agrees with all of the calculations I did beforehand.  I love it when that happens!

What is even better, over the summer, the electric rates were peaking because most of our electric is generated by oil and natural gas.  It was durring those months that we saw the most savings, our electric use dropped to 15 kWh/day vs. the previous 3 year summertime average of 28 kWh/day.

My payback time should be less than 4 years.

If you are still not convinced, here are 5 solid reasons to install solar power.