Time to Go Solar!
I love, love, like silly, gaga, over the top love, solar. How beautifully simple and elegant it is. The energy source that fuels all life on this planet can also power my house and my car. It's brilliant. I got really interested in solar when I was in college in the 90's. At that point, it actually was financially out of reach for almost everyone. I continued to assume that was the case, though I always knew that whenever I built my little earthen house, it would definitely be solar, no matter the cost.
A year or so ago, a friend of mine came to me asking if I wanted to join in his solar business. He said I could work from home and just make referrals to existing solar installation companies. Essentially many of them are beginning to outsource the sales portion to focus on the design and installation parts. Then he told me something that actually blew my mind. He said you can switch to solar and make a monthly payment roughly equivalent to what you are currently paying for the electric bill. Then it's paid off in just a few years. I had no clue it had come down so much in cost. It has come down 70% in the last 8 years! In some places where people pay exhorbitantly high rates for electricity, homeowners are saving money immediately by switching to solar. In Hawaii, you can go solar with battery storage and still pay less. Isn't that fabulous?! Now I'm not a sales person. It's just not how I'm wired, but I figured I can sell this because I love it.
The first solar system I sold
And I'm not talking about DIY solar installations. I'm talking about you hanging out in your living room while other people make a good living doing it for you. And the price dropped even more through 2017. This drop has a lot to do with massive growth in India and China. India recently built a 1000 megawatt solar farm. Solar farms of 1000 and 1500 megawatts are being planned in China. Their investments in solar are making it easier for all of us.
And yet people still seem hesitant. So I am here to shout it from the rooftops! Financing is easy in many countries. You don't have to put money down. Your monthly bills won't go up. You will be helping make a difference with our current ecological crisis. It's the right thing to do, and it's easy.
I get wanting to complain about political and social situations. Seriously, I do. There's some real douche buckets in the world right now. It's time for action, though. We are facing some serious issues. Just this week I've written about the patriarchy, raising revolutionary children, child abuse, and CPS corruption. We have big problems, and we have to step up and do what we can. This is something you can easily do that costs you nothing and seriously takes maybe two hours from your life. If you own your own house, hop to it. If you don't know how, ask me, and I'll help you. Even if you live somewhere that my company has no connections, I'll help you find them. Chop chop!
An added bonus: with the incredible rise of EV's, the cost of battery storage will drop dramatically. If you get your panels now, you'll be well on your way to having them paid off when batteries become more affordable. Then you can totally and completely divorce your evil electric utility.
Double bonus: Get that EV you're eyeing and power it with the sun shining on your roof. Sweet!
Here's to the end of coal, gas, oil, and nuclear power!!
We need more solar enthusiastic !
Agreed!
One comment: the biggest favor you can do yourself if you want to do solar is to reduce your energy consumption. The less energy you use, the easier/less costly a solar system will be (or, the more power you can sell to the grid!) You cannot sustainably be on solar unless you have good energy habits.
Worst power utilization offenders include baseboard heaters (forget it), dryers, electric furnaces. Step one of any solar project should be an energy audit.
After I in installed my system I replaced every incandescent bulb with LED and increased my excess production significantly. The credit I get from my utility (grid tied) is fairly low, but hopefully we will be able to sell or donate our excess by the end of 2018.
I agree that it's helpful, but I don't think it's necessary. The price has come down so much that a lot of people are just switching without making any adjustments to their energy usage. Ultimately this is a good thing because it's otherwise natural gas for those energy hogging appliances, and I'm all for being done with that mess as well.
I guess it depends what we're talking about. If you are talking about a grid tie system, where any power you generate goes back to the grid, you're absolutely right. In that case your energy use and the power you sell to the grid are independent and have nothing to do with one another.
If, on the other hand, you are talking about an off grid system, energy utilization matters very much, as you'll need a battery bank large enough to sustain you, and you'll need a PV array large enough to recharge that battery bank in a reasonable amount of time. In this case, every bit of energy matters. The difference between someone who reduces their energy and someone who maintains their standard power utilization profile would be in the tens to hundreds of thousand of dollars.
Certainly the cost of batteries makes a big difference, but that cost will be coming down pretty drastically in the very near future. It's hard to imagine going into hundreds of thousands though.
yes! i love the empowerment that this post brings forth!! we live in a pretty "backwards" state in the US that doesn't offer any incentives, but we were gung ho about doing solar instead of getting hooked up to the grid.
as you say, soon it will become easier and easier for people to get it as the prices go down and gov't incentives go up!
it feels so so so good to be charging my computer now and running my freezer off solar! incomparable benefits...
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Thank you! I so agree! I really was surprised by how much the cost has come down. As soon as we get a piece of land, we will be paying basically the same price for a monthly solar payment as we are for our electric utility, and I'm so excited to be off the grid. Honestly, I don't think that federal tax break will be around for much longer. It's 38% though. If you pay taxes, definitely take advantage of that.
The monthly payment option seems very viable for getting the mainstream solarized. Really excited for you to get land and your own solar setup.
Me too!!!! And I agree. Mainstream just needs things to basically continue the same in their personal life, and then it's easy for them to jump on board.
such a good point. i often ask myself, how can things really change and it is this: to integrate these eco friendly models into people's existing lives. most people wont step out of the box too much...
Exactly. It's taken me a really, really long time to figure out that I'm way, way, way far out and probably always will be.
I have had my eye on solar energy for a while. When I lived overseas, I saw it as good way to have back up energy when the main system went down. But the cost was too prohibitive!
Now that I am back in the States I would love to investigate more, but unfortunately, most local solar companies will not install a system (on top of a home) unless you already own your home.
I am not sure that means completely paid off or not, but since I am renting for now, I have to put this great idea on the back burner a little while longer.
You don't have to have it paid off, but you do have to own unless of course you can talk your landlord into it.
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