Is everyone having a good Earth Day? Ours isn’t so great.
Every year, my wife organizes a town-wide “free-cycle” event. Everyone can drop off and/or pick up whatever they want. There are guidelines, so people can’t just bring their trash. It’s always a huge success—except for this year. Rain canceled the event. She’s looking to reschedule it for next month. It takes a lot of coordination to get the permits and volunteers.
It’s good that we’ve been able to do it for four or five years without rain.
I’m also surprised that I am publishing an article today. There are lots of big events happening in Lazy Man Land. I have about four or five other articles that I need to finish and publish. Unlike the “free-cycle,” it doesn’t make sense to reschedule an Earth Day post for a later date.
Let’s kick things off with…
Solar Power Update: Nine Years Later
We just completed our ninth year with solar panels. It’s been great! The only “hassle” was one of the 20+ inverters that failed a couple of years ago. We generated 5% less energy for a month while our local company sourced the part and installed it free of charge. I wish all my problems could be solved as easily as typing a few emails like that.
We paid $16,000 for the solar panels. They would cost $32,000, but energy programs and tax credits cut our costs in half.
In nine years, our panels have generated 82 MWh of electricity. Don’t worry if you don’t know your energy conversions; I don’t either. That’s 82,000 kWh of power. Next, I went to Energy Sage’s RI page to see that the average cost of electricity in RI is $0.30 per kWh. I’m using that source instead of my bill because the costs of electricity can vary drastically every few months. We have expensive energy in Rhode Island.
That’s one of the great surprises about solar power – it’s very cost-effective even in states that you wouldn’t think are sunny. If our energy was cheaper it would take longer to make back our investment.
Getting back to the math, the 82,000 kWh of energy at $0.30kWh would have cost us $24,600. Wow, we saved a lot of money, right? Actually, that’s not a fair calculation. The cost of electricity wasn’t always $0.30 kWh. When I reviewed our solar energy after four years the cost of a kWh was around 21 cents. In addition, we had to pay for the panels in 2015 dollars. If we invested $16,000 back then, we’d probably have a lot more in 2024, right?
Another way to look at it is that we’ve paid about 19.5 cents per kWh ($16,000 divided by 82,000) so far. It will be interesting to see how this goes down over time.
Fortunately, our Enphase dashboard has a dollar calculator that makes it easy to see how much we saved. Perhaps that’s more accurate.
It looks like we’re getting pretty close to breaking even now.
Every year, we have produced 8,500 kWh or more. It tends to go down as they get older. We used to generate 10 kWh when they were first installed. Solar panels get less efficient over time. If we produce 8,300 kWh and electricity stays at $0.30, we’ll save $2,490 next year. If electricity gets more expensive we’ll save even more.
When we bought our solar panels the salesman said that they are guaranteed to be 95% effective for 25 years. Looking at the numbers, I may need to look that up. Sometimes we’ll have periods of snow where they don’t generate anything.
Nonetheless, we went into it with the idea that it was going to be a 25-year investment. Perhaps we’ll get 16 years of more than $2,500 in savings for a total of $40,000 worth of “free” electricity.
TL;DR: Our solar panel purchase was a great money move and great for the environment.
Moving on from the solar update, here’s something else to look at:
Encourage Kid Entrepreneurship this Earth Day
Over on Kid Wealth, I wrote about how to inspire a kid entrepreneur this Earth Day. I worked out a business plan where they could make and sell soda can tab bracelets for a small profit. Recycling and entrepreneurship are a winning combination.
Previous Earth Day Articles
Here’s a look back at my Earth Day Articles from the years gone by:
- Climate Change is like Personal Finance
Whether it is personal finance or fighting climate change, the little things add up to become big things over time.
- All At Once
COVID shutdown hit one month when I published this one. The Jack Johnson lyrics written in 2008 about the environment described how many were feeling about COVID-19.
- Solar Panels: One Year Later
My one-year review of solar panels.
- Solar Panels Completed
My post after finishing the installation of the solar panels.
- Four Lazy Ways to Save the Environment
This is an old article from 2009. I was recommending CFLs – those corkscrew bulbs. We still have and use some, but the technology with LEDs is better and more cost-effective now.
If you’ve finished all that reading… or even if you haven’t, I hope you take some time to get outside and enjoy Earth day today.
Joe says
Sorry to hear the recycle event had to be canceled. Hopefully, she can get it back on track soon.
The solar roof sounds like a great investment. We’ll look into it when we move. I’m hesitant to make any big change because we plan to move in about 5 years. For now, I want to upgrade just enough to sell.