Fascinating discussion . . . are we taking bets on how many pages it will run?
I'm thinking about a solar water heater and solar panels for our house here in Florida. We built it in 2010 using every energy saving thing that made sense. As a result, our electric bill has exceeded $100 exactly one time in 13 years because the heat pump had a freon leak and ran overtime.
Energy efficiency in homes is like buying high fidelity equipment - you can get to the point of diminishing returns. For $100 you can have music - it won't be impressive. For $250, it will be acceptable. For $1,000, it'll be darn good. For $2,500, it can be phenomenal. BUT, if you double that to $5,000, it isn't going to sound twice as good, in fact, most people won't notice a difference. For $10,000, you're buying ego, not music.
So we did super insulation, double pane windows, a high efficiency heat pump (remember, we were starting from scratch), a high efficiency water heater, now LCD lights, and so on. No gas appliances - personally I don't like them and I consider them a fire risk (YMMV). We have no natural gas plumbing here and propane is unregulated by the PSC and the prices are very volatile. No thanks.
Next steps are the solar water heater and some solar panels. The water heater conversion isn't expensive, but some of the systems seem rather finicky and take a lot of owner participation, quite frankly, I'm not sure I want to be bothered for the marginal savings promised. Solar panels, however, are supposed to be set and forget, plug and play, and that appeals to me because my view of utilities is that while we have to have them, I do not want to participate - I. do. not. want. to. be. bothered.
Power costs have been going up here, but not by much, and unfortunately not fast enough or drastically enough to make me say blankety-blank we're going solar TODAY!!! (I think it is the boil the frog slowly theory of price increases.)
At $100 a month, if I spend $5,000 on a solar system, it might be five years or so before I break even - and I'm 77. So yes, it does make sense, but again, in the absence of a steep and sudden increase in power bills, it isn't urgent.
So my plan is this - start small with half a dozen panels and microinverters. Use this to power the utility building, which has lights, a couple of computers, a small refrigerator, and an eave vent fan. The welder and compressor will remain on the power company's lines because they take a LOT of power, even if only for short intervals.
The nice thing about using "old, inefficient" panels is that they are cheap. I regularly see 200 watt panels on Craigslist for $50 each. Since I have the space, if I want more power, I just have to add more panels. If I only had one small rooftop available, then I'd need the most space-efficient (high output) panels available. Remember, the fuel, sunlight is free and gets delivered almost every day, and lots of it. Besides, I like to tinker, and I am an old friend of electricity (I got to be an old friend because I respect it).
Do I NEED to do this? No, probably not. $100 a month isn't going to break me and even if it goes up a bit every month, realistically, I don't figure on living to 120 years old (be nice, but not likely). If I were 40, then I'd definitely do this now because I'd have 60 years of savings in front of me.
Is solar the answer for everyone? No, but it can be very beneficial in the right circumstances.
Best Regards,
Mike/Florida