Jan Panteltje wrote:
On a sunny day (Thu, 15 Apr 2004 05:57:18 GMT) it happened
wrote in :
A guy in Florida quoted 48 years pay back time. I ran
the numbers for my home - over 40 years, and I pay 13
cents per kwh. A 2 kW system costs $15000. Assuming
an average of 8 hours per day of 2kW per hour, that
solar system would give me 16 kWh. I pay 16*.13 or
$2.08 for 16 kWh. Works out to 19+ years for payback,
if you don't count on mortgage payments for the system.
Add that in, and the cost of a $15000 system is
much worse - over 30,000 in a 25 year, 7% mortgage.
You have to take into account that the cost of a kWh from
the grid in 25 years will be a LOT higher too, if there
still is a grid during and after WW3 that is.
JP
Use Solar Guppy's measured numbers and show us how
to take into account what you have in mind. I don't
know how to do it - I can't figure out what the
rates will be N, N+1, N+2 etc years from now.
But while you are talking about things "you have to
take into account": you have to take into account
the fact that most homes are not "solar friendly".
By that I mean that they can't get a full days sun
on the solar panels, due to neighbors trees, hills,
the house orientation on the lot, size of the lot,
etc. You have to take into account maintenance
costs for the solar system - it is totally unrealistic
to assume that the initial cost of the solar system
installation is all you will pay during the life
of the system. You also have to take into account
the degradation of the system capacity over time.