[JoJo354]

How much did it cost you? How much will new batteries cost when they go bad? how about the solar panels themselves? And they do go bad over time. It’s just like electric cars...oohhhh they are so much better for the climate except they do use alot of energy just charging up. I don’t have the answers but solar can be very expensive initially which most people can’t afford. It’s just like the electric cars that most folks can’t afford.

[Tell It Right]

I used a HELOC to pay for almost the entire cost of the solar system and converting my two natural gas appliances to electric. Right now the savings each month on my utility bills are almost, but not quite, paying the HELOC payment. As the HELOC balance is slowly paid down, the payments will go down too, all while my savings slowly increase each year (again assuming a 3% inflation rate in electricity and natural gas costs -- avoiding that means saving more).

My batteries have a 19-year warranty guaranteeing a gradual decline in throughput to 50% at the end of the warranty. That's part of the math on it paying for itself. The same with my solar panels having a 25-year warranty declining to 70% efficient at the end of the warranty (slowly losing 30% along the 25-year span).

Once I realized that a solar system's decline in throughput is less per year than energy costs inflate each year, that was when the math worked in my favor. Basically I have warranties on only a slow decline in my solar system. We have no warranties that energy costs will go up only slowly -- quite the opposite. The Dims promise to keep jacking up energy costs to force us to repent from our cow farting sins.