Solar; The Home Finance No-Brainer

Sustainability begins at home. Sometimes the most mundane ideas really need to be front and center of a major project. My project is what I call #SustainableLifestyleEngineering, and it is something I have been working on in various ways, both in writing and practice, for several years. As a project it is a bit unwieldy, with tentacles reaching out into all sorts of places, sometimes intertwining, and sometimes charting new territory. With that in mind, this post is a more or less random starting place. But it begins at home, with a story about my early thoughts on this project, so that seems appropriate.

The process that led to my wife and me taking the plunge into solar was kind of fascinating. The end result, actually installing solar on our home, was daunting, but ultimately doable. Anyone who has hired a contractor to redo a kitchen, or even a small bathroom, knows that home renovations are not for the meek. When you add the financial questions, solar becomes a more ominous project than most home improvements. It is the teacher in me for sure, but I figured I had to share what I learned about the process with anyone who might be interested. It is a frightening proposition to make such an investment, and early on in my own research I found that, interestingly (or maybe sadly), most of the really helpful, concrete information on solar is provided on personal blogs of homeowners. At the same time, I had a hard time finding a comprehensive description of the whole project from top to bottom. Now I think I know why — it is incredibly complicate and, as just mentioned, a time-consuming project in itself to record it.

You can read more than you probably have ever wanted to know in my Solar Project post, but here I will discuss some of the more esoteric aspects of the investment.

First, converting your home to solar is a financial no-brainer, meaning that if you plan to live in your home for another 10 or more years, and you have the appropriate roof layout (generally meaning unshaded and facing in a southerly direction) then you really owe it to yourself to stop paying an electric bill AND begin collecting energy credits*. It is my sincere hope that as many people as possible will get on the solar bandwagon as soon as possible. There are two reasons for this. One, I like to help other people save money, and two, I would like my kids, and future generations, to be able to continue to live happily on this planet.

So this launches me into the subject of sustainability, as related to my conversion to solar electricity. If we simply consider sustainability first, and what it truly means (capable of being supported or upheld, as by having its weight borne from below), then it is easy to see that saving money and saving the environment are intrinsically related. History has shown us quite clearly that people are unlikely to do something like convert their homes to solar if the expense is too high. In fact, more recent history seems to have shown that people will not convert to solar unless they actually make a profit. Even with today’s legislation in many states that guarantees at least a small profit, the movement toward solar has been painfully slow. Are we simply gearing up for a surge, or perhaps at the very beginning of a massive upswing, or are we seeing that people just don’t really care all that much about the environment?

My good friend, Tom Miller, is wrote his master’s research paper on issues of sustainability and in that paper he details polls that have shown that only about 40% of Americans think global warming will affect them in their lifetimes, even though over 80% of climate scientists believe it will. That alone is enough food for serious thought about where we might be headed. I am not going to try to convince anyone here that global warming is real, but I do urge everyone to get current on the subject.

The Strimel Family Process:

One day my wife and I started talking about money. We have two very young kids, and together earn a modest amount of income, and we worry a little about whether or not we will be able to fund two college educations, and eventually retire happily. But sitting at the breakfast table on a Saturday morning, we talked about our cable bill. We had talked about the freakin’ cable bill for months actually, but it seemed we were finally ready to cancel our service. Bam, just like that we were suddenly saving $1500 per year (as if it was that easy to get a Comcast or Verizon rep to just cancel your service). Times that by 15 years and we are looking at $22,500. Hmmm. It would be painful, mainly to never watch a Phillies game at home again, but $22,500, not even counting interest? The wheels began to turn. Alone the cable bill is kind of a drop in the bucket, but what other changes could we make to possibly make that drop a puddle . . .

We then looked at our car and homeowner’s insurance. Truly, in about 15 minutes I determined that Geico was our best option for car insurance (who knew??), and then we enlisted the help of a local broker to find us the best homeowner’s rate. We ended up going with Harleysville. And with that we were looking at another $1000 saved. This was getting fun.

I won’t bore anybody with the play-by-play details, but as we inched through every aspect of our home business (meaning, how we run our lives) I woke up one day and found myself staring solar squarely in the eyes. I cannot remember the exact thought process, but it was kind of an awesome moment. I remember fantasizing about producing my own electricity as a kid, but any time I even remotely considered it, the reality was not so inspiring. For many years it seemed like solar was for serious tree-huggers that were willing to part with serious amounts of their own money to help the environment; admirable, for sure, but not exactly practical. But then, a quick internet search showed me things have changed since the last time I read anything serious about solar. Add that I was in the throes of maniacally patching tiny holes in our bank account (seriously, I was close to a state of laughing wildly while swinging an ax around my head. Ax, sealing holes. Bad mixed-metaphor, but you get my point), and you might understand clearly that the new information I read about the cost of solar made me a ripe target for a sales rep.

Luckily, when I contacted someone about the possibility, it was a woman from a solar aggregator, who was willing to talk to me for as long as I wanted, and never once applied any pressure whatsoever to make a sale. Instead, as I teach my public speaking students about persuasion, she simply spoke as a true expert and answered every question I had with solid information. You can read more about aggregators, Maria, and the value of dealing with someone like her in my Solar Project post.

As I went over and over the information Maria provided, I was amazed at how much sense it made to take the leap, but I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. To really keep this short, it never did, and we began producing more than 100% of our electricity requirement a few months later. We installed in 2015 and should recoup the cost of the investment in less than five years, and will save approximately $60,000 over the next 15 years. Along with our other cost-saving measures, maybe we are looking at being about $100,000 richer, which basically means we will be able to contribute the combined maximum into our IRAs over that time period, plus. When you factor in the compounding interest on an IRA, suddenly we are way, way less worried about retirement.

Oh, and we significantly decreased our carbon dioxide footprint by 8.5 tons (some annual concrete comparisons to this figure include, displacing CO2 emissions from the annual electric use of .388 homes, recycling 2.9 tons of waste instead of sending it to the landfill, eliminating 1.6 cars, saving 870 gallons of gasoline, or planting 200 trees). If you multiply these factors over the lifetime of the system it is significant.

Oh, and we have two kids who will be saying, for the rest of their lives, “I grew up in the first house in our neighborhood to have solar electricity. Related to that idea, we also installed the panels on the street side of the house, so we are also now the living example of doing the thing, and are also helping people get used to the look of a solar array on a roof. When the sun is shining and I flip on a light switch, there is a tiny little feeling of satisfaction. For the first time in my life I feel like I am doing something truly significant in regard to the environment. This is in no way denying the power of small actions, like finding the appropriate receptacle for a recyclable container, but imagine that small sense of satisfaction in knowing you are doing a good thing and multiply it by taking 40 cars off the road (based on 25 years).

But perhaps more important, in a way, than all the concrete environmental impacts of installing solar, is the influence it has on the way we thing about our lives. Sustainability. A sustainable lifestyle. A movement that could prove to have the biggest impact on the earth is simplicity, and more people consuming less of what they do not need to survive. Doing something as drastic as installing solar had an immediate impact on my perception of my immediate surroundings, and how I move through the world. Saving money is a little addicting, as is the excitement of watching a savings account grow with the excess created from not paying an electric bill. One of the first things I did after installing solar was to invest about $500 in LED lighting (the price has come way down since), and we immediately increased our excess electric that earns us a credit from the utility, and paid for the lighting in two years. What I am circling here is that there is a strong link between your home finances, and your approach to sustainability -- your own financial sustainability, and then your footprint. This may be mildly offensive to the warrior environmentalist I have always admired, but getting a critical mass of people to downsize and decrease their carbon footprint is probably going to take more financial incentives.

*Please look out for my next post about how we can counter the ebb of state-sponsored solar incentives by supporting #SolarCoin.