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this post was submitted on 13 Oct 2023
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Frugal
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Not sure if this counts, per se, but Solar Panels. Specifically, via a loan.
My electric bill is insane, thanks to the powers of capitalism and monopoly. So I figured installing solar panels would be a good investment. Sure it takes ten years to break even, but I’d rather be paying my way through that than paying my electric utility.
Well, the problem I ran into was that the interest on a loan would effectively negate any headway I was hoping to make per month.
I still plan on doing solar, but not before either interest rates at least quarter themselves or I save up enough to practically pay for it up front.
Depending on where you live, the feed in tariffs are a scam as well, so you better make sure you use any power you generate instead of feeding it back to the grid (either by shifting use or installing a battery).
I don't know much about residential, but I've been watching battery/solar setups for vans and RVs, and the cost of batteries to store power has been going down a lot.
I wonder if there'd be savings if one set up a "house battery" that only charged at night, then you use the stored electricity during the day.
Maybe hiring an electrician to do it would eat any savings, though.
Although, if one is more of a prepper than simply frugal, setting up a big "house battery" to smooth out electric outages due to thunderstorms or whatever might be nice.
Batteries could definitely be used to use cheap night time electricity during the day without solar. I think in some places you could even use it for arbitrage (use the grid market to get power when it's cheap, feed it back when there's more demand, etc).
Are you in the US? Are you factoring in the federal rebate? Are there any other state or local rebates you might also qualify for?
It's still a terrible investment in the US if you are looking at it purely from a monetary perspective.
When I was looking at it, break even is usually just shy of 10 years, so let's call it that for easy math. You install a $20k solar system, and you end up making about $30k over a 25 year life span, assuming you never have any major issues and never move out of your house.
In contrast, you could dump that 20k into the stock market. With an average return of about 7-8% (the historical rate of the s&p500) you'd walk away with about $110-140k.
There's noble environmental reasons to do it, but financially it's just not a great return right now.
Edited to clarify: You'd also need to be paying for electric in the second example, so minus 50k over these 25 years. You're still up about double to triple over the solar panels.
The rebate is only as good as my taxes… so it helps, but not enough to make it a financially wise decision at this time. Similar story with the state incentives.
For myself I got them when rates were low. It actually saved me money instantly, swapping from a $300/mo bill to a $140/mo solar loan repayment.