Solar panels – Good for the environment, good for your wallet

It wasn’t enough for us to simply reduce our carbon footprint through building a super-insulated eco-house. We wanted to come as close to eliminating our footprint completely by working towards a net zero standard. The house envelope, airtightness, passive solar design, and thermal mass of the house, would all have the effect of reducing our energy consumption by 75-80%. The rest of our energy for heating, domestic hot water, and appliances was purely electric based, with the exception of our wood burning stove. We have no natural gas to our property – and to be honest, even if we did, we would not have hooked it up. Burning fossil fuels for energy, despite it’s current affordability, is not a clean energy source nor is it sustainable. Still, despite what some people say, electricity – at least in Saskatchewan – is not sustainable nor is it clean either. Our electricity comes from a power plant that uses a combination of coal and natural gas. Really, in one of the windiest and sunniest places in the world, you’d think we should be able to have some capacity to utilize renewable energy sources. Unfortunately, this is often a top-down decision in the government and sadly, both our provincial and federal governments are heavily financed through their strong ties to the oil and gas industries in this country (no matter how much of a downturn there has been in the markets over the past year) and there is no sign of this changing anytime soon

Until such a time that the collective elite decide to recognize the need to shift away from non-renewables, it will continue to be left to the grassroots movements and local homeowners to decide if they care enough to make a commitment to renewable energy – despite the upfront costs of doing so.

But these times are changing. No longer is it purely a decision of environmentalism. Now the argument of the economics of renewable energy can be made. Let me present this in layman’s terms (as I am, of course, a layman myself).

Our projections for electrical energy consumption:

Estimated yearly energy use (DHW, appliances, heating) = 14,508 kWh (including regular wood stove use for heat)

Cost per kWH hour of electricity in Saskatchewan = $0.1456

Our projected electrical costs per year = 14,508 x 0.1456 = $2,112.36/year or $176.03/month

We worked with a company in Saskatoon, called MiEnergy, in sizing a choosing which solar array system would best suit our needs. We decided to purchased a 6.2 kW PV array. There was the option to upgrade to the 9.3 kW system but we felt that this would definitely be oversized for us at this point. The 6.2 kW system will be slightly under-sized but we can always add on more panels at a later date if we so choose.

6.2 kW system delivers an average of 775 kWh/month = 9330 kWh/year on average

That provides us an immediate saving of $1358.45 per year ($113.20/month) in energy costs. Expanded over the course of a 25 years this delivers $33,961 in electrical savings at the current electrical rates. (I found an interesting article on the energy outlook in the U.S. – there has been a $0.04 cent rise per kWh from 2003 to 2013. Extrapolating that, conservatively, over the next 25 years we should expect an upwards $0.08-0.10 rise per kWh. That equals between $0.22-0.24/kWh. The projections from MiEnergy pegs the 30 years saving at $58,067).

If you take the cost of the PV panels and roll this into a 25 year mortgage at a current 3.19% interest, this only costs a meagre $110/month. So essentially instead of giving $113.20/month (currently, which will increase) to the government to cover our extra electrical bill, we will invest $110/month towards the PV panels on our mortgage. After 25 years, they are paid for and we have money in our pocket (not to mention the fact that we’ve saved 233,250 kWh of energy from being generated at a polluting power plant). That’s a win for us and for Mother Nature.

If you want the facts and economics only, then disregard the story that follows. Of course, I wish my post, could be that short and simple. But as I’ve learned with building the house – something always goes wrong – no matter how bizarre, stupid or impossible it might seem…

The above photo is the after shot. After I received the phone call at 6pm on a Friday night from Saskpower (the electrical company) asking why a large steel beam had been driven directly through their power line?

“Uh… I don’t… know?”

You see there is this thing called: “Call Before You Dig.” It’s a free service that most places have that asks that you please call them to mark your underground power and gas lines before digging so that you don’t kill, maim, electrocute or otherwise dismember yourself. Unfortunately, as we learned that night, it is not a perfect service.

The solar company had called and had the power line (note, the singular word: line) marked a couple of days before the planned installation. Unfortunately, there were in fact, two power lines running into our transformer, one from our neighbours place to ours and the other running from ours to about 60 houses over the next number of miles. Well, you guessed it, they hit the one running to the 60 houses (that was not marked), knocking out their power for the next 8 hours. Oopsy.

When I showed up to the house, you could see the one line that was marked (as it was prior) with the solar panel racking system 4-5 feet away, then you saw where they had discovered the 2nd line, lying directly underneath the 2nd row of racking (not previously marked). The Saskpower guys though were very good, they realized it was not the fault of the solar company, nor mine, the line simply had not been marked by the Call Before You Dig people. They were just glad that no one had been hurt. They were able to restore power to the 60-odd houses that had been affected and the next day they were back out to splice and move our newly rediscovered power line.

(Incidentally, this was a total blessing, had they actually marked both power lines previously, we would not have been able to put the solar panels where we had wanted them. We would have been forced to find another, less ideal spot a much greater distance away).

By the way, we have had a number of people ask us why we did not choose to utilize a solar thermal system for water heating. Basically, it was because of this article and this article on Green Building Advisor.