Repost from @thunderbird_disco • THE COST OF SOLAR, PT. 3: The difference between buying a car vs. solar is the panels SAVE money off our utility bill, like buying a car that uses much less gas. By producing 8,375 kWh of our own energy per year, @sunday.solar estimates we’ll save about $75 off our monthly bill, about $900/yr. We can work down our HELOC loan by making the SAME payment of $75/mo and our overall expenses will be identical ($0 difference per month)! . So that was our affordability answer: WE CAN FEASIBLY PAY THE SAME AMOUNT AS WE’RE SAVING FOR THE NEXT 30 YEARS AND NOT FEEL IT IN OUR MONTHLY BUDGET. It’s the same as if we just kept renting power from the utility company until we’re 70+ years old, the way most people do. . Maybe climate change will make world a chaotic hellscape by 2050, where banks are gone and money is not a thing? In that case we might keep our monthly payments low! If we’re feeling optimistic we might realize that taking 30 years to pay this off means paying a LOT in interest (roughly $13K extra) over the life of the loan. Maybe we don’t want to give extra money to BofA any more than we want to give it to Dominion Energy. So…it’s a matter of what we feel we can afford, how long we want to take to pay it off, how much interest we want to pay over time. . With the information we have, we’ll probably try to pay off the panels in 10 years, which means a monthly payment of about $175, which will feel like $100/mo when we subtract the $75/mo we’re saving on utilities. If our financial picture changes, or if we hate paying interest, we can set a lower/higher monthly payment. There's VA legislation that might make solar even more affordable. But we're still talking only about money. . A huge reason to go solar is the environmental impact, as Jack clearly sees. Our system will save 132,520 lbs of coal over its lifetime, and is like removing 27 cars from the road each year. . Hope this helps demystify the process! I don’t know if any of this will pan out but go ahead and ask me anything! https://www.instagram.com/p/B8_rA4kH2dz/?igshid=hemxxpyqx1bm
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