Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Your PV system, if you sacrifice on usage by a quarter, is just barely a break even economic proposition,
I would not say 'barely a break even', most off-grid PV systems should break even within 7 years after you turn them on.
Quote:
... but you still don't see how investing your "saved" electric bill money on a monthly basis (which nobody has the sense of responsibility to actually do) won't earn you as much profit over the 20 yr lifetime of the system as foregoing the purchase and putting the whole $30G into investments for the whole 20 yrs.
Nobody has said a word about earning money back from a PV installation.
Your PV system, if you sacrifice on usage by a quarter, is just barely a break even economic proposition, but you still don't see how investing your "saved" electric bill money on a monthly basis (which nobody has the sense of responsibility to actually do) won't earn you as much profit over the 20 yr lifetime of the system as foregoing the purchase and putting the whole $30G into investments for the whole 20 yrs.
In my model, there's no money invested out of pocket and each month the cash flow is better than paying your local electric utility. That is a "no brainer" investment. That you don't understand it speaks volumes. You lack a fundamental understanding of money.
No, it's you who is not doing a complete accounting of the process, either ignorantly or disingenuously ignoring the lost investment potential of tying up a sizeable chunk of capital in order to save (maybe) a few bucks each month on electricity costs.
By analogy, one could justify buying a Ferrari instead of a Chevy because the Ferrari can be sold after 20 yrs for so much money. Inflation may raise the cost of the luxury car, maybe even to a price higher than it's original price-- in inflated dollars. You would still be money ahead to have bought the Chevy and invested the difference.
Look at it this way: a 4kW system producing power for 6 hrs/d (in Phoenix) for 25 yrs (giving you the benefit of max, not real production) would produce 4x6x365x25= 219,000 kW-hr. At 12 cents/kW-hr, that's $26,280 if bought from the grid. That's your savings over 25 yrs.
But your PV system cost $30,000. So you're $3720 behind PLUS the lost investment you could have had if you had put the $30Gs in the Dow.
Even if I concede that the system only costs $20Gs, you'd only be ahead on electric bills by ~$6000, but be behind on lost investment potential by ~$40,000.
AND THEN YOU'D HAVE TO SPEND THE CAPITAL AGAIN TO REPLACE THE SYSTEM. After 2- 20 yr investment cycles, you'd be behind $100,000 or more.
Your $6G savings works out to only $240/yr and we're ignoring the maintenance, repair and battery replacement costs, which probably wipe out that savings.
Submariner keeps saying his system pays for itself in 7 yrs. To do that, his 4kW system in ME @~4.5 hours of sun/d produces 4x4.5x365x7= 45,990kW-hr in seven yrs. @$0.12/kW-hr= $4519. Even at $0.20/kW-hr, that's only $9200.
No, it's you who is not doing a complete accounting of the process, either ignorantly or disingenuously ignoring the lost investment potential of tying up a sizeable chunk of capital in order to save (maybe) a few bucks each month on electricity costs.
By analogy, one could justify buying a Ferrari instead of a Chevy because the Ferrari can be sold after 20 yrs for so much money. Inflation may raise the cost of the luxury car, maybe even to a price higher than it's original price-- in inflated dollars. You would still be money ahead to have bought the Chevy and invested the difference.
Look at it this way: a 4kW system producing power for 6 hrs/d (in Phoenix) for 25 yrs (giving you the benefit of max, not real production) would produce 4x6x365x25= 219,000 kW-hr. At 12 cents/kW-hr, that's $26,280 if bought from the grid. That's your savings over 25 yrs.
But your PV system cost $30,000. So you're $3720 behind PLUS the lost investment you could have had if you had put the $30Gs in the Dow.
Even if I concede that the system only costs $20Gs, you'd only be ahead on electric bills by ~$6000, but be behind on lost investment potential by ~$40,000.
AND THEN YOU'D HAVE TO SPEND THE CAPITAL AGAIN TO REPLACE THE SYSTEM. After 2- 20 yr investment cycles, you'd be behind $100,000 or more.
Your $6G savings works out to only $240/yr and we're ignoring the maintenance, repair and battery replacement costs, which probably wipe out that savings.
Submariner keeps saying his system pays for itself in 7 yrs. To do that, his 4kW system in ME @~4.5 hours of sun/d produces 4x4.5x365x7= 45,990kW-hr in seven yrs. @$0.12/kW-hr= $4519. Even at $0.20/kW-hr, that's only $9200.
What if a guy put $1 on a lottery ticket and what if he won $100Million? Then who is the winner?
If you wanted to make profit, you would be investing in the stock market.
This thread is not about making a profit, it is about 'Switching to EVs'.
Solar-power as a method of powering an EV is a great way to do it.
We got into Solar-power because we needed reliable electricity, which our local utility company can not provide. Later we got a hybrid car because we were tracking fuel prices going up and up. We had no way to tell the Saudis were going to cut oil prices to screw Putin. But that was what happened and suddenly our gasoline prices dropped.
But what if the Saudis had not dropped oil prices? Gasoline prices would have continued to climb and our hybrid purchase would have looked very wise.
Now we have a plug-in hybrid, and each day's driving starts with 25 miles on EV. I have no complaints.
Soon there may be EV 4x4 utility trucks available on the market:
Bollinger B-1 Bollinger Motors
We got into Solar-power because we needed reliable electricity, which our local utility company can not provide.
I can respect that. Your decision was based on energy security and you were wiling to pay a little more for that. I made a similar decision on a smaller scale to ensure my water supply.
You did not make the switch based on some uninformed belief defended with religious fervor that t would make some kind of imaginary difference for the environment.
I am not a nuke, and I have never been to Orlando, sorry.
Most of my schooling was in DamNeck.
A Weapons-puke. Should have known it. I'd love to hear your perspective of what it was like to move from a "41 for freedom" boat to an Ohio class behemoth. I was out of the service before the Ohio class came on line.
your car cost you ~$7000, but you saved ~$4000 in fuel while your PV system cost $11,000, so your bank account today reads - $14,000.
But if you had put the $7Gs for the car and the $11Gs for the PV system into the Dow in 2014, you would have spent the extra $4000 in fuel but your Dow acct would now read $24000, so your net value would be +$20,000.
That's a difference of $34,000 that you're behind. Your real payback period now look mores like 25 yrs and only if the Dow doesn't go any higher in the next 2 1/2 decades. The Dow averages ~5.5% gain per year, so your fuel savings are about equal to your loss in investment potential each year, but without having that original P + 25 yrs of I still left in your pocket.
OTOH- if your daily commute involves more than 1/2 hr or so of stop and go crawling along, a hybrid would be a wise choice. You don't have to worry about running out of electricity and you're not wasting petrol while sitting at idle in traffic.
I see your point about the total sunk cost, but the savings project for several years out. I expect the EV to last at least 4 years (saving more than $16K, now that the price of fuel has increased) and the PV system is warrantied for 20 years to produce 130,900 kWs. My utility company charges $.21 per kW, at the lower tier, under the standard plan and seems to raise rates by 3% each year. Because I've switched to a time-of-use schedule, I'm credited at $.43 per kW produced during the day, and charged $.13 per kW when I recharge the EV and run the 5-ton AC compressor. I'm a net 7,200 kWh annual consumer, but I'm banking a $200 net credit for future use. Honestly, if I didn't have this arbitrage I wouldn't use the AC, heaters, EV, or dryer as much. The EV also cuts my wife's commute time by 1 hour roundtrip each day. Adding the PV array has made my lifestyle much more comfortable and I don't know how I would value that in dollar terms. I guess I'd say that I'd be willing to pay $5K a year for this new way of living; my wife would probably be willing to pay $15K (clearly we value money differently).
As for having a hybrid, we already have one and we are putting about 1,000 few gallons of gasoline in it each year as a result of having a BEV. As for the stock market, there are no guarantees. I've been investing since I was 16 years old and have learned to lock profits, let the dividend reinvest in tax-deferred accounts, and to follow asset rotations because nothing goes straight up indefinitely. The other thing is that money has little to no utility unto itself. Money is only useful when you exchange it for something in the now or future good/service. As I stated before, I'm happy with the lifestyle change that we experienced through adding an EV and PV array. I guess there's a lot of intangible benefits that I'm spouting off, but I think there's a net real world savings that is much more than you implied since you were only stating the fuel cost savings and not the 130 megawatts of electricity I am to produce. My electricity bill would have been over $3K a year, but I'm getting a net $200 credit instead.
So that's about a 1.3 year payback period on the EV (based on fuel and toll road savings) and 3.4 year payback on the PV system (mostly due to the arbitrage...selling at ~$.38/kWh and buying back at ~$.18/kWh). My house is about 8 degrees cooler in the summer and 5 degrees warmer during the winter. I have no regrets.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
