Lazy Man and Money

Why Homes Should Invest in Solar Energy

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Solar Energy

The following is a guest post from a reader named Greg Petersen. I have been so busy homeschooling kids and going crazy in isolation that I haven’t been able to get into the flow of writing. I also find it very hard to write on personal finance topics when there are so many things that are more important. However, I was so impressed at the research and references to my other solar articles that I felt it was worth running. At a time like this, I doubt too many people are consider solar energy, but if you have some time on your hands to do the research now, maybe it will make sense when things look better.

The news about the polar shift and different natural catastrophes being experienced in different parts of the world has made the idea of going green and going off the grid seem a lot more appealing. With climate change and other man-made destruction identified as the possible reasons for the earth’s outcry, many people are seriously thinking about using clean energy.

The constant earthquakes in different parts of the world, the sudden drop in temperature in Afghanistan, and bushfires in Australia are all indications of how serious the earth’s condition really is. These global catastrophes are not something one person can solve. Instead, these concerns need a more urgent, unified effort from the people of the world.

If you are still not convinced of the urgency of going green and shifting to solar energy, here are some points of contention that might sway you in the right direction.

Solar power is environmentally-friendly

One common but underrated fact about solar energy is that it’s a green and clean energy source. This means that when you shift to solar power, you are significantly reducing your carbon footprint. With solar power, nothing hazardous is being released to the air that might pollute mother nature. And since solar energy does not release greenhouse gases, it does not use other resources. Given these factors, one can say that solar energy is 100% environmentally-friendly and safe.

In addition, solar power is also self-sustaining. If you install solar panels on your roof, you are on a path to contributing to the earth’s sustainable future. Plus, your home will offer proof of your personal commitment to mother nature.

Solar energy paves the way for a cleaner renewable power source that not only benefits homeowners but also the environment. Compared to other alternative sources of energy, solar power reduces the local and global carbon footprint, significantly contributing to the efforts of reducing greenhouse gases. This energy source is known for its favorable impact and advantages to the environment.

In the U.S. electricity is mostly generated from natural gas, coal, and other fossil fuels. The process of extracting and converting fossil fuels into viable energy sources is not only expensive but also detrimental to the environment. Solar energy, on the other hand, is abundant and free. If you could capture all of the sun’s energy for an hour, you could produce power for the entire world that would last for a year.

If you invest in solar energy, you take a proactive stance in reducing the world’s reliance on fossil fuels. In the process, you’re pursuing a more consistent and abundant energy source — the sun.

Solar energy helps limit the emission of greenhouse gases

If you generate electricity using solar power instead of natural gas or coal, you can dramatically decrease the volume of greenhouse gas emissions, especially carbon dioxide. Greenhouse gases are produced through fossil fuel burning, leading to the rise in global temperatures and climate change. The latter contributes largely to public health and environmental issues; including ecosystem changes, rising sea levels, and extreme weather events.

If you go solar, you can help reduce the rising demand for fossil fuels while shrinking your carbon footprint and limiting your greenhouse gas emissions. A single home that opts for a solar energy system can create a measurable impact on the health of the environment. The U.S. Energy Information Administration stated that an average home using solar panels in Connecticut consumes 8,288 kWh of electricity every year. If that home was switched from fossil fuels to solar power, the homeowners could reduce emissions significantly and create a positive effect on the environment equal to planting 150 trees a year.

The average electricity use in New York homes is at 7,248 kWh per year. If these homes switched to a cleaner energy source like solar power, they could reduce the carbon emissions that result from burning more than 5,000 pounds of coal every year.

Solar energy helps decrease cardio and respiratory health issues

One of the most persuasive reasons why one should invest in solar energy is its effects on our health. With such a clean energy source, you can expect that there will be less air pollutants. According to the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), with more people shifting to a solar power system, there would be lesser emissions of sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxides, and other particulate matter. Aside from this, NREL also found out that solar power helps decrease cardiovascular conditions, respiratory problems, and chronic bronchitis. Worker productivity will also increase as people experience less illness.

With solar power you can go off-the-grid

Compared to electricity, solar panels are less costly. Traditional electricity significantly relies on fossil fuels like natural gas and coal. These substances are all detrimental to the environment. They are also not sustainable energy resources. As a result, the market for energy resources is volatile, with prices fluctuating violently all through the day.

If you choose solar electricity, your independence from electricity will be boosted further. If you invest in a 4KW-size solar system, a common size for domestic use, you can spare yourself from the ever-fluctuating utility prices. With a cheap and clean electricity source, you won’t feel guilty enjoying your appliances all day long. After all, the sun will never increase its consumption rate. The sun will give you the energy security you need.

The moment your solar panels are installed securely on the roof of your house, technically, you already reached the status of a person that’s energy-independent. Plus, the storage systems of your solar battery will allow you to safely store electricity for use during rainy days and nighttime.

Underutilized land can be used with solar power

If after all that has been said you are still not sold on the idea of installing your own solar power, think of the unused lands that have been left unattended. With solar energy, you can transform these untended lands into areas that can be used to generate more solar power.

Energy shortage is a worldwide phenomenon. Especially now that the threats of natural calamities and disasters are almost everywhere, the topic of energy sufficiency is more than timely. And since everyone is using electricity, it is time to join hands in a collective effort to capture more solar power.

People can harvest solar power in large quantities from solar farms. A 45-acre farm is able to provide electricity in more than 2,500 home volume of energy. The amount of solar energy that can be sourced here is more than enough to power a town, city, state, or even country. People and nations will no longer have to suffer from high-priced electricity costs and unclean energy sources that will end up destroying the environment.

Enjoy a lower energy bill

If you don’t want to go completely off the grid, you can still benefit from a solar panel-powered home. The generation of solar power happens primarily in the afternoon when the sun is up. More solar power can also be generated during summertime. This is the perfect answer to the high energy need during this time of the day and season of the year. It’s in the afternoon when it’s so hot that most homeowners turn on their air conditioners.

Solar energy is valuable in the sense that other energy production methods like natural gas plants that are used to meet the highest energy demands end up being overly expensive. Before the new utility pricing scheme was introduced, homeowners were charged with a flat rate for electricity. This means it doesn’t matter what time of the day they used electricity, they pay a fixed monthly rate. If you install and use a solar power system during this time, you can’t really feel the benefit. It’s like the cost of installation of your solar power system offsets the cost of your electricity bill.

Fortunately, a vast majority of the utility companies in the U.S. now adapt a new pricing scheme that charges homeowners different rates for different hours of the day. The ratio behind such a scheme is to reflect the actual electricity production cost at different times of the day. This means that you will be charged higher rates in the afternoon when the demand for electricity is at its peak, and lower rates during the night. The extent of the benefit you enjoy as a solar power system owner depends on when you use your electricity the most. This investment is most beneficial to those living in areas that implement varying pricing schemes over different seasons of the year due to seasonal demand fluctuations. Those who consume more electricity during summer will feel the most benefit from solar power.

Sell solar-generated energy to electrical companies

Apart from a significantly lowered bill, you can also get a credit from the utility company if you sell your extra solar-generated power to utility companies. Net metering plans are common in the U.S. This is where residential consumers are allowed to use the solar power that they put into the grid to offset their use of power at other times. A home is selling power to a utility company when the power that the house puts into the grid is greater than the amount of electricity their household consumed. Your monthly bill will be the basis for your net energy consumption.

As you already know, the net metering mechanism enables utility customers to feed their saved-up and unused solar electricity back to the electricity grid. To fully take advantage of this benefit, you need to educate yourself on the varying net metering policies and regulations across the states. You can also refer to the Database of State Incentives for Renewables & Efficiency (DSIRE) or get in touch with the office’s local utility companies to get more specific and thorough information.

A Portland homeowner, for example, saves about $17,000, on average, if they use solar energy for more than 20 years. If you live in Boston, in the span of over 20 years of solar power usage, you can save around $43,000. If you live in Los Angeles, in the same period, your savings can spike up to more than $50,000. To get an estimate of how much you can save, check with DSIRE.

Added home value

Another benefit of using solar energy is the potential increase in the value of the home. Generally, it’s safe to assume that solar panels will raise the market value of most homes. As already discussed above, the homeowner can forever benefit from lower electricity if they buy a house that’s powered by solar energy. Next, there’s a global trend toward green living and this also means there’s an equally increasing demand for houses that are powered by sustainable and clean energy sources that emit smaller volumes of carbon. Lastly, if you buy a home that is already powered by solar energy, the investment will be financed through the mortgage for the homebuyer. Because it’s possible to finance a mortgage for houses with solar panels already installed, this is easier and possibly more affordable than buying a house run by traditional energy sources and choosing to invest in solar panels later.

Take advantage of tax subsidies and grants

Lastly, another worthwhile advantage of going solar is the tax grants or subsidies offered by the state government. You may have already heard of the campaigns run by federal and state governments encouraging homeowners to switch to solar energy. If you do, the government offers a tax grant or subsidy to assist you in having your solar power system installed. The rationale behind these financial incentives is to encourage more homeowners to use solar panels. The final cost of the system after it is installed can be less than its sticker price. Additionally, tax credits are also given for homeowners who use solar power, which can decrease your tax bill.

One thing you want to do is check with your home insurance (such as Allstate Insurance) to make sure that your solar panels are insured. You want them to be safe from hurricanes, tornadoes, and other acts of nature.

The Value of “Free” Electricity

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Over the last few weeks I’ve been writing about our move to solar power. In case you’ve missed the articles, let me bring you up to date. For Earth Day this year, I started to explore whether going with solar power would save me money. Then I forgot about it until the question of leasing solar panels came up on another blog post. That got me motivated to have a company give me a free initial proposal which showed that solar could cover 83% of our energy needs. In meeting with the company, we came up with a revised proposal that would cover 101% of our energy needs.

Finally, I wrote about financing our solar panels. That was an adventure in itself as the bank the vendor partners with uses an example loan of 9% interest over 20 years. Fortunately, an alternative is to use home equity to get a loan or line of credit at a rate much closer to Prime (currently 3.25%), which we intend to pay off in 2-3 years. However, a loan with tax-deductible interest at such a low rate is tempting to keep around awhile.

Today, I thought I’d cover the value of “free” electricity. I have to put “free” in quotes, because buying and installing solar panels is anything but free. In fact, the cost for our 7700 watt system is around $33,110. However, after state grants and federal tax credits, the real cost to us is $16,440.

This system is expected to produce 8772 kWh of electricity. We used 8625 kWh of electricity, so it would replaced our entire bill which is currently $1522 a year. As I’ve found from readers we should be very grateful that we have equal net-metering… the extra power we produce gets sold back to our electric company for the same price what we pay to buy from them.

So what is the value of saving that $1522 every year? Academics have written papers on how much money people need to retire. For years it looked like that number was 25 times your annual expenses. This was figured out by taking a big sum of money, say 1 million dollars and realizing that investing it over time would produce $40,000 in income that could be withdrawn indefinitely. These rules became known as the rule of 4% and the multiply by 25 rule.

Everyone loved them and there was much rejoicing to have those rules in place. (I imagine it as the financial equivalent to “unicorns, show ponies, ‘where’s the beef?’!”)

Someone forgot to remind people that rules were meant to be broken. Over the last year or two, many academics and media articles have suggested the rule of 4% should be adjusted down to 3.5%. This makes for a less than sexy rule of 28.571428. That only flows off the tongue of Sheldon Cooper.

We can bring back the unicorns and show ponies, because here’s the beef: Either number gives a good estimate. So to not through the baby out with the bath water, I’m going to pick a number in the middle, call it the rule of 27.

My newly coined Rule of 27 says that to have $1522 indefinitely, I’d have to save and invest $41,094. With that number invested, I could (more or less) safely withdraw $1522 a year to pay my electric bill.

So to eliminate that annual electric bill, I could put $16,440 into a solar system or I can put roughly $41,094 into some investments (which will remain undefined as that is a study in itself). The way I see it, I save $24,654 going solar.

One thing that is worth mentioning is that solar isn’t forever. The panels get less efficient over time (around 0.7% per year) and the warranty ends after 25 years. It’s almost impossible to predict 30 years down the line, but it seems reasonable to presume that it is nearly 80% efficient. In that scenario, it would still be producing $1200 worth of electricity at today’s prices. That would still be $32,000+ dollars invested.

This level of analysis has helped me make the decision that under the right circumstances solar can provide substantial value.

Financing Our Solar Panels

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Have you been following our move to solar power? In case you haven’t let me bring you up to date. For Earth Day this year, I started to explore whether going with solar power would save me money. Then I forgot about it until the question of leasing solar panels came up. I got of my Lazy butt, and had a company do an initial proposal that would cover 83% of our energy needs. In meeting with the company, we came up with a revised proposal that could cover 101% of our energy needs.

This all puts us in a place where we are looking at a 28 panel, 7700 watt system that cost $33,110. However with state and federal subsidies, our final cost would be $16,440. The federal subsidy of $7000 comes in the form of a tax credit. I have to look, but I’m guessing we’d have to wait close to a full year, because they won’t install the panels until next spring.

The state grant is taken off the top right away, so we are left responsible for footing the $23,485 bill while we wait for the $7000 federal tax credit.

As luck good planning would have it, the local solar vendor has partnered with a bank to provide financing. It was conveniently provided with the rest of the information. Unfortunately, this financing was horrendous. I’m not going to mince words, but Admiral’s Bank isn’t even worthy of being an Ensign.

The solar company’s packet contained a graph that the system would pay for itself in 9 years if electricity has 3% inflation. If it has 5% inflation, it pays for itself in 6 years. This is exciting stuff, when you are looking at 25 years of use. That’s a lot of years of free electricity. The math was something like $40,000 in electricity for $16,440… obviously a big savings. The $40,000 number makes sense because we pay $1522 a year now and in 25 years that’s $38,000 assuming no inflation.

Then you flip to the page and look at Admiral’s Bank’s financing. They outlay a 20-year loan where you’d pay $32,168 to save $41,699. It is considerably less exciting to save $9,000 over 25 years. In fact, it is $360 a year or $30 a month… less than a quick call to my cable company recently saved me. The savings looked even worse when you looked at it on a yearly basis, since the real savings came in the years 20-25 when the loan was paid off. Before that there were a lot of years where the savings were less than $200.

Perhaps most interesting, they ran all these numbers without ever showing what interest rate they were using. In fairness, they didn’t pull my credit to see what I qualified for. No, screw fairness Admiral’s Bank, just print the damn number so I can see what you are using to calculate these numbers that suck up my sweet solar savings. Admiral’s Bank spends so much space saying that you’ll be saving $9,000 that they don’t tell you that you’ll be paying double the cost of the system with this financing. They do point out that the interest on the loan qualifies for a tax deduction which makes it look better.

After talking with the solar vendor, he was able to get me a range of rates that Admiral’s Bank uses based on credit score. On the 20 year loan that was outlined, the best rate is a shade under 7% for the very best credit, and shade under 9% if you are in a 700-724 score range (which isn’t that bad). So while I still don’t know what interest rate was used for this paperwork, it gives me an idea.

We would qualify for that 7% rate, but Admiral’s Bank didn’t pull my credit report to know that. If they presumed a 710 credit score and ran the numbers with a 9% rate, it is easy to see how that loan product would look terrible when extended over 20 years.

On principle alone, I couldn’t deal with Admiral’s Bank. Their 5-year loan, at the best credit is 4.99%, which is much more reasonable, but pushing long-term rates in the 8-9% just upset me. (Can you tell?)

Looking into Home Equity Loans

I booked an appointment with the local bank that serviced my mortgage to ask about their Home Equity Loans. Of course the big difference is that these are loans secured against our home rather what Admiral’s Bank was offering.

Nonetheless, the local bank has a 5-year option home equity loan at 3.875%. That’s much better.

I ran the math through a calculator and realized something that surprised me. It was almost exactly our car payment. This was an easy way to explain it to my wife. We paid roughly the same $23,000 for our Suburu Forrester and financed it over 60 months (hey that’s 5 years!) at 0%. While we wouldn’t be getting the 0% rate here, the numbers are fairly similar. So I explained that we take a little financial burden, $431.19 a month, for now to save on electricity for years. We already pay $125 a month, so the additional cost would be ~$300… and when the $7000 federal tax credit comes through next year, a big chunk of that gets paid off.

However, it gets better.

The bank has potentially a better deal for Home Equity Lines of Credit. There is a choice of the following:

  • For 12 months, they are offering a 2.49% rate. After that it goes to the Prime rate which is currently 3.25%, but can adjust upward.
  • For 24 months, they are offering a 2.99% rate. After that it varies with the Prime rate.

To get the special rates, I’d have to commit as soon as possible as they could disappear at any time. However, this means the clock starts on the special rate, even though we don’t need to make payments for a little bit… and we wouldn’t get savings until next Spring when they can be installed.

In some ways it doesn’t make sense to go with the 2.49% rate since a few months of it would go to waste because I simply don’t have to make payments.

I think I’m looking at the second rate as being best. The Prime rate has stayed pretty steady for a few years now, and while it might go up a quarter percent, I don’t expect it to go up much over the next couple of years.

I plugged this option into BankRate’s Loan Calculator and the amortization table shows that we’d spend about $705 in interest on this loan… and that’s assume that Prime goes up and the average rate is 3.25%.

Alternatively the 5-year loan at 3.875% would have us paying nearly $1300 in total interest throughout the loan.

We could aggressively pay it off, maybe as soon as in two years. However, if Prime stays low and the interest is tax deductible, should we really be in any rush to pay it off? I think about it, and it is almost like paying off a mortgage with a 3.25% rate early, can’t we find a better opportunity than a less than 3.25% return (when accounting for the tax deduction.)?

For example, I’ve been earning over 7% interest in Lending Club amongst hundreds of diversified loans. That’s just one quick option that came to my mind.

Allow me to flip this question back on the readers. Which financing option would you take? If it’s the 2-year at 2.99% HELOC that adjusts to Prime, would you be in a rush to pay it back? Or would you trust that you’d have ample warning before that rate got out of control?

Moving Forward With Solar Energy (Part 2)

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Earlier this week, I wrote about how I am investigating a move to solar energy. I highly recommend reading that article first. There’s a lot to learn about solar energy in general and this article builds on the information in that article. In addition, the decision to go with solar is highly dependent on one’s specific situation and a lot of that information on my situation is there.

When I left you on Monday, I had just received a packet of information from a local solar vendor. The estimate was to put 24 panels on my garage, which would supply 83% of electricity we use each year (assuming that the last year was “typical”). Our electric bill would go from $1,522 to $309 in the first year. According to the company, we will keep 4.82 tons of CO2 out of the air each year, equal to 144 trees processing CO2 or avoiding burning 497 gallons of gas.

In short, we’ll save a lot of money and do a lot of good for the environment. If I can’t plant 3600 trees over 25 years, this seems like the next best thing, right?

The vendor wanted to meet and talk over the proposal. I was eager to the same. We met for an hour and a half and I got every question I had answered.

My biggest question was, why put the panels on the garage and not the main part of the house?

The answer came from measuring the solar efficiency of the roof. In order to measure a roof’s potential they take four measurements from all the corners with a sophisticated device and average them together. In order to receive state grants the roof must be 80% efficient. In looking at the numbers from my house, I have two corners that were north of 95% efficient and one that was 79% efficient. The last corner was 47% efficient… a killer.

I had known that I had a tree potentially blocking part of the roof, but I didn’t think it would be a big deal. I was wrong. As the sun gets lower in the horizon, it blocks more and more of the roof. The vendor and I went out to look at the tree and it actually looks a little dangerous, leaning towards the house. In a storm, the could hit our house and do some damage. Even if I didn’t go with solar, it would be wise to have some tree people check out the situation.

I asked the vendor if I cut that down, would we be able to use the main roof for additional capacity? He said we definitely could and that it would probably be more efficient than the garage we were planning on.

We went from putting 24 panels on the garage (in a 6×4 arrangement) producing 83% of our energy needs to putting 28 total panels on both roofs producing 101% of our projected energy needs. The plan would be to put 16 panels (8×2 arrangement) on our more efficient main roof and an additional 12 (6×2 arrangement) on the garage. This would reduce our bill to $44 a year. It would be the equivalent of 175 trees processing CO2 and not burning 606 gallons of gas.

The solar panels get less efficient every year… on average 0.7% less efficient. After 25 years, the panels will be “only” 82.5% effective. That’s still very good. Considering that projections are for 25 years, everything after that is gravy. It’s kind of hard to think 15 or 20 years in the future, but we’ll have half the space on the garage to build further capacity. Who knows what they’ll sell then, but hopefully they are a standard size. Then I could buy 6 more and put them in the most efficient part of the main house and shift the older ones to the space on the garage. That kind of boost could extend the life of the whole system producing 100% of our power to 35-40 years.

The Cost of the Panels/Installation

As previously mentioned, there are two vastly different prices when it comes to solar: the actual price and the price after state and federal subsidies. In the case of the 24 panels, my original cost would be $28,380, but after state grants it would be $20,130. The solar company applies for the grants in our name and takes that money off the cost right away. (Let’s pause to celebrate a big Lazy win!) That $20,130 is eligible for a 30% federal tax credit making the final price $14,091. The price is inclusive of labor, permits, wiring, etc.

The 28 panel that we are looking to go with would cost $33,110, but state grants bring it down to $23,485. The federal tax credit brings it to $16,440. The timing of the federal tax credit, is of course after filing taxes, so there’s an area in there where about $7,000 is due to come back to us, but we have to foot the initial money. It’s not ideal, but these credits come amazingly close to cutting the price exactly in half for us.

This all begs the question of “how do finance this move to solar?” It is far from a trivial question and is worth it’s own article. So stay tuned for that.

Should You Lease Solar Panels?

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A couple of days ago, I read an article on My Journey to Millions by Evan about how he is considering leasing solar panels.

The arrangement is such that another company, Vivint, ponies up the cash for the equipment and Evan would agree to buy energy from them instead of his electric company. On the surface it sounds like a win-win. Evan would pay less money per month and he doesn’t have to come up with $20,000 or $25,000 for equipment. Presumably it pays off for Vivint too, because, well, let’s just assume that they are pricing electricity at a point that it is profitable.

(Before I go any further, I think “leasing” is the correct word as I’m not sure if he’d own them after 20 years. It could be a rent-to-own situation.)

The article particularly caught my attention because a few months back, I also explored saving money with solar power.

My research was mostly dedicated to buying the solar panels. “Research” may be too strong a word. Truth be told, I didn’t venture off of my keyboard. I realized that one of my first steps would be to determine the age of our roof. If it is old then it doesn’t make much sense to put solar panels just to pull them down again. It looks like our roof is old enough where I put the research on the back-burner.

However, should I have explored leasing as well? While I pitched it as a win-win above, I’m a little skeptical if it optimal. As I said above Vivint wouldn’t offer it unless they making money. So if I could find a way to fund that equipment myself, I could enjoy the benefits of a greatly reduced or perhaps even zero electric bill.

Let’s start by presuming that we don’t have a spare $25,000 in our bank account, which is fair considering we have activated “ultra-frugality mode”. And for sake of argument let’s presume that $25,000 is a fair cost of the system (it could be more). I’m also going to use some of Evan’s numbers for how much he pays for electricity (around $170 a month).

Let’s start with the tax credits. As Evan explained Vivint would take the $7,500 federal credit and he’d get to keep a $500 state credit. However, if you bought the panels you’d get to keep both, well presuming that your state offers a credit. I did a little quick look-up and it seems that the federal credit is 30%, which does turn out to be $7,500. Because we are talking about a tax credit instead of a deduction, the value is a full $7,500. Since I don’t know if your state offers a credit, I’ll conservatively assume there is none.

So now we are paying $17,500 for our system. That’s still a lot of money and you have to wait for the tax credit.

This is where a little of my past experience helps. This past year we put in a central air-conditioning system that was around $15,000. We found that they offered 0% financing for a year. If we can do this for the solar panels it helps buy time for the tax credit to kick in. In addition, during this time we wouldn’t be paying for electricity so we could funnel the $2000 we spend a year on it to paying down the bill. Our $25,000 system is now a $15,500 system.

Unfortunately, I can’t seem to come up with any other ways to lower it from there. However, we spread the payments out just like we do with our current electricity bill. Our local bank is offering a Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC) at a 3% interest rate. Using the this helpful loan calculator we see that it will take 107 payments to pay off the loan – just about 9 years.

If you lease the solar panels over 20 years you save right away, but this way you’d get 11 free years of electricity presuming a 20-year lifespan. The efficiency of the panels probably get worse over time. In year 20, they probably don’t produce the same amount of electricity as they do in year 1. However, since electricity will likely be more expensive in year 20 than in year 1, it may be possible to save the same amount of money.

I found another article covering the types of calculations that need to be done to determine if it’s right for you. It’s helpful in that it covers some of the basic, important calculations that I glossed over such as, how much electricity we actually use. The numbers in the article’s example are much, much bigger, perhaps reflecting more expensive systems from a few years ago. An expert there suggested that a good payback time is between 5 and 10 years, so this estimate would fit right into that range.

One thing that Evan and I share is living in the northeast. According to these government solar maps it is pretty much the worst for solar power. So if it looks feasible here and is better just about everywhere else in the continental United States (sorry Alaska readers), it seems like many people should be jumping on board, right?

So why haven’t they? The only thing I can think of is that the cost of solar power is getting cheaper every year. You wouldn’t want to commit to a laptop for 20 years would you? I see it as kind of the same thing.

So what do you say? Lease or buy solar power? Have you looked into it? Can we use it to eliminate one of our necessary expenses? Can I get through this whole article without mentioning the awesome environmental benefits? Nope, but I came very close.