We were very lucky to receive a generous gift this Christmas and rather than frit it away on ‘stuff’ we decided to invest it in our house. We talked for a while and decided that given rising costs, rises that don’t look as though they will ever stop, we would buy some solar panels for our roof, so calling the roof top services one of these days too.
After some research and recommendations we decided to give Tony a call. After a chat with him we decided to get him over for a quote so I gave him our address. “You’re having me on aren’t you?” he said. It ends up his best mate of 30 years is our neighbour and his is the mystery ute I see parked out the front of the neighbour’s house ever day.
It ended up his quote was fantastic for a quality install. We’ve gone with a 3.6kW system (18 panels) that we can upgrade to 4kW (or maybe it’s 4.2 or 4.4) at a later date. This will cover almost all of energy needs based on the past 12 months of usage and reduce our electricity cost to about $25 a quarter based on the standard calculations all installers should use. As most of our install cost is covered by the gift we are lucky in that we should see a return from the part that comes from our savings fairly quickly. Once our wallet recovers we will probably go the extra few panels to cover our needs completely.
Here’s our roof as it was last Wednesday.
And here it is as it was this Wednesday.
One week from quote to installed. Now we just have to wait for the inspector next week and then it’s all up to Origin. That’s the one part of the process I’m not looking forward to.
If you already have a smart meter, it should be easy.
We do Andrew so that should be one less obstacle. I have no doubt that Origin will still find ways to make life fun though.
Very cool. Am I correct in thinking that the panels are on the west-facing portion of the roof? Perhaps it’s the biggest single section? But it’s not a very steep roof, so I assume it would do well even in the middle of the day, as well as the afternoon/evening (which of course are peak usage times).