Solar Power

Its been almost a year now since we installed a 1.75kw solar power system and evacuated tubes solar hot water.  We don't have a north facing roof so we placed the evacuated tubes hot water on the nw corner of the roof and the solar panels for electricity on the east facing roof.  The front of our house faces east. We also have a lot of very tall gum trees in the neighbourhood which tend to block the sun early morning and late afternoon.  The only time we have had to turn the electric booster on for the hot water were those few times that we have had cloud and/or rain for about 3 days. 

Where we are at Wangi, our electricity company is Energy Australia.  We signed up to a new contract earlier this year where we feed 100% of what we generated back into the grid and receive 66c per kw paid to us each quarter through the buy back scheme.  We then receive our electricity bill as normal where we are charged different rates for Peak, Shoulder and Off-Peak.

We do use more electricity than we generate.  Even though we have replaced lights, fridges, freezer, dishwasher and washing machine with more energy efficient alternatives and try and schedule the use in the off-peak period .  However, because of the attractive buy back scheme the cost of our electricity is covered most quarters.

Our biggest problem is living in a pole home (wood) with polished wood floors with no insulation.  Come winter and the house is freezing when the westerlies blow up the hill.  We are in the process of building in under the house which should alleviate most of this problem.

We are very happy that we invested the money in solar electricity and don't think we could have received a similar return if the money was invested in shares or sitting in a term deposit.