Phantom Menace wrote: Earlier in the year there was a thread with chats about solar panels, electricity usage etc. I had purchased a house with solar panels (no batteries) a year ago tomorrow and a couple of people said they would be interested in overall cost / usage once I had been in the house for a year so ... I had a quick look at the data available on the Mercury website for me just now. A summary in round numbers is: Total bills for 12 months: $1,400 (electricity and gas combined) Gas usage: $500 (1810 kWh) Electricity: $900 (2800 kWh) I haven't dug into the detail to see the seasonal (or monthly) variation but may do that at some stage. FYI this is for an average 3 bedroom house with 3 people (a lot of "work from home" due to COVID). Gas is for hot water and a gas hob. |
Steps wrote: Missed your post V8 Yes we have been watching the 'market' for many yrs now. Yes Results more or less same as you describe... Also Family moved on , big section in middle Manurewa, gardens landscaping, and spending too much to in looking after rather than fishing and road trips. So knew we will be cashing up to developers and retiring. So once settled in a home we intended to retire in for long time... Also time to re visit solar. Logic being. Retirement hits the back pocket hard, so reducing over heads on long term.. Panels last out longer and rather than replace just add a couple to them to take up the efficiency deficit 20 odd yrs down the line.. IF Im still alive at 90 odd. Batteries still have a life of around a decade, regardless of use and expensive...And for use to go almost off the grid, means 2 batteries (hence the HWC thing in 1st post .. A work in 'design' progress..) And along with reducing costs long term, was now the Government going EVs, we dont have the infrastructure to support environmentally friendly electricity supply, either in production and lines...We can see costs going up scary in the near future... The latter, yes batteries would be nice... What they dont tell you is you need batteries to still have power if a power cut...the battery is in effect Also the UPS. Hence the LPG tanks.. power cut, still got household hot water and cooking. Anyway thats what we have done, the results , and the whys done , and not done stuff. What I have not yet looked into is rather than a battery, a small 1.5 to 2 kw generator which is big enough to run the servers, fridges freezers basic lighting over night... plus the odd fresh expresso and cuppa tea. |
Ho Dee wrote: I figure that at current electricity prices and buy back rates our pay back will be 6.8 years which will hopefully be less as we figure out how to use more power when it is being generated |
MATTOO wrote: Thanks for the update. Be helpful to compare your year before data though as a comparison. |
v8-coupe wrote: Grrrrrr. Had to sign out then in again, again. Had another thought after my post, as mentioned in first posst of the thread, the house was purchased with solar already installed so they are on a winner and cannot lose or wait to break even. |
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