What’s all of this going to cost?
Good question! “You need to spend money to make money” definitely applies here…
Before we get to the costs I should first talk about how much energy we are consuming a year. My current annual energy consumption is as follows;
Total Kilowatt Hours = 35,000
Total CCF (natural gas) = 1,500
A 14.72kw solar system will generate about 20,000 kWh of energy annually in my area (an offset of $2,823 per year @ $.14 per kilowatt hour). In addition the SRECs will bring in ~$5K in annual income. The geothermal system (actually two separate systems for my house) will save ~70% on heating costs and ~50% on cooling costs plus heat over 50% of our hot water.
In round numbers I estimate the 14.72kw solar system will run about $95K and the geothermal system will be about $48K (all before rebates & tax credits or about 1/2 the cost afterwards). Now that is a HUGE upfront investment but the payback is only about eight years. The way I look at it if I were to do nothing & energy costs didn’t go up over the next ten years I was looking at spending at least $75K anyway. With this investment I should break even in a shorter amount of time & will totally eliminate my energy bills plus turn an annual profit of $2,000.
Domenic
Posted in Solar