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The system is $18K to install, with $6,500 in rebates so $11,500 end cost..
I pay $350 - $500 a month for electric from May until Oct and $250 or so Oct-May. 2000 sq ft home with a 4-ton HVAC set to 85° during peak and 78° off-peak.. My wife is a home maker and 85° when it is high 90° outside during the summer is not comfortable for her (or my kid or the dogs), dropping the HVAC to 78° puts us into the $600 range for a month. Add to that, SCE (Southern California Edison) has had roughly a 3.75% over standard inflation rate increase yearly since 2002, my current $350ish bill will be well over $1000/month in 10 - 15 years.
Last year my electrical usage was just a bit over $5,000 so my "pay back" would be 2-3 years..
This is my last house, I was in my previous home for 24 years, plan on being here until I die, so at minimum another 30 years. I'm not a mover, we found our dream home and plan on staying, no reason not to make it as automated, efficient, and comfortable as possible for us.
As I understand it an 80% system is averaged over the whole year and based on 5 hours/day of peak sunlight, the solar irradiance test SCE did to our home shows we have 7.8 to 9.6 hours/day as the home faces East/South East. So a 100% system is overkill, however we are setting the inverter and braces up so we can if the need arises we can add up to 6 more panels in the future to create a 100% system.
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