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Hmm, is there anyway you can cover half the solar panels when your family goes back mainland? Or perhaps heat a swimming pool or water catchment system? Or move the drain from the valve to somewhere it won't hurt the grass? Maybe into a French drain type system? Add in another storage tank of water? Sounds like the system panel to storage ratio is heavily weighted in favor of panels.
Solar water heating does do a lot to decrease an electric bill. I think the next largest demand on electric rates would be A/C or an electric dryer, depending on which one was used more. Anytime electricity is used to heat things up, it gets expensive.
Hawaii has, hands down, the highest electric bills in the United States. I read some dork telling a poor family said they had a $1,000/month food bill and $500/month electric bill that they must eat steak and shrimp because THEIR food bill was $200 a month and that their food bill was also $200/mo. This was obviously coming from some hostile local just waiting to try to browbeat anyone from the mainland--don't believe him. He said his electric bill was $200/month with air on all the time and the family they were beating on said their bill was $1,000.
I'm going to set it straight. I was born and raised in Hawaii and we pay the most outrageous bills on EVERYTHING here. Electric bills. I know people who pay $1,200-$2,500 per month for electricity. The family that ate on $200 a month were typical locals who are probably Japanese (A Galapagos species of Japanese who four generations after migrating here as field hands have evolved into an odd species who are stranded here. They speak a bizarre dialect of english they call pigin, they are chronically uneducated, and they eat unique foods that are not American or Japanesee, and woould make anyone in the U.S. cringe. Example: spam musubi, which is something that tastes like garden snails on rice. Disgusting and HORRIBLE tasting, but they can feed a family of four on it for six dollars. It's spam on rice with a piece of seaweed, sits out on a counter all day until it generates salmonella half the time, but they won't refrigerate it. So this bizarre dude putting the other guy down was a real local and everything he says is to be ignored or treated as if it was the stuff one rids themselves of each morning on the toilet.
Expect to pay $1,200/month to 3,000 a month for your electric bil, gas is $4.40 galllon so expect to pay a bunch, it's hot and misrerable, and the only reason people stay is to go to the beach and surf, which will give you skin cancer in a year.
As as they say, a great place to visit, but a miserable place to live. Crowded and grridlocked traffic. My avuncular advice, stay in a real part of the country. Don't bother with Hawaii.
What a bunch of garbage. Your one post screams "Troll!"...
Here are my electric bills for a 2000 sq ft house in Kailua, Oahu for 2009 and most of 2010. This includes power for a swimming pool pump and skimmer. There are two window air conditioners that are not run much. No solar heat or electric. There is a gas hot water heater that runs about another $40 per month:
Here are my electric bills for a 2000 sq ft house in Kailua, Oahu for 2009 and most of 2010. This includes power for a swimming pool pump and skimmer. There are two window air conditioners that are not run much. No solar heat or electric. There is a gas hot water heater that runs about another $40 per month:
Here are my electric bills for a 2000 sq ft house in Kailua, Oahu for 2009 and most of 2010. This includes power for a swimming pool pump and skimmer. There are two window air conditioners that are not run much. No solar heat or electric. There is a gas hot water heater that runs about another $40 per month:
Our bill, with electric water heater and catchment water (meaning we have a water pump) and dishwasher averages right around $200-$220 every month. All lights are CFL bulbs and even now a few have been upgraded even more to LED. No AC, just some fans, as needed, and only 1 television.
These numbers are why solar electric works well in Hawaii. We've got less than $10K worth of solar photovoltaic equipment on the roof and our electric bill was zero this month. We are invested in Hawaiian Electric, though and they paid us $93 this month in dividends. The dividends are used to pay for the gasoline for the generator which is run occasionally in the winter time because of increased power use and less solar input (it gets dark earlier).
Electricity doesn't have to be a needle in your arm, but to kick the habit you do have to learn how to care for and keep up a solar system. You also have to be very aware of what is plugged in and how much power you have to work with. For ease of unlimited consumption, though, grid power is the way to go - all ya gotta do is figure out how to pay for it.
We also aren't running a pool pump, A/C unit or anything that heats up things with electricity if we were, we'd have to increase the size of the solar system to carry the load. What we do run are lights, computers, refrigerator, freezer, power tools, washing machine, aquarium pump, and small stuff like that. However, we don't leave the lights on when we aren't in a room, we don't leave the TV running if nobody is watching it, we usually do laundry when the sun is shining, etc. So living with a solar system is an ongoing daily sort of thing. If the system were about four times bigger (and four times the installation cost) then we wouldn't have to be as aware of energy consumption as we are now.
Hank's numbers seem spot on to me. I've got a 1400 sq ft condo in Honolulu, and our bill is usually in the $100 - $150 range.
Since I don't have any heating bills in the winter, which used to run me sometimes $600 / month in New England, I think I actually pay less in utilities overall.
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Power - actual usage on Oahu
