Everyone always talks about the return on investment when it comes to solar. When are my panels going to break even? How many years? This to me is a silly question. No one ever asks when the refrigerator, TV, furnace, car, video game is going to break even. I consider my solar a integral part of the house, something that the house couldn't be without. I have not found the solar additions to the house any more expensive than say a regular furnace. What we did was eliminate some to the things that we felt are not neccessary in the house and shift the costs over to the solar. This is what we found we could do without.
1. A basement (our last one was a storage space for stuff we didn't use anymore)
2. Extra bathrooms (each bath costs about $5,000 not to mention the time to clean each one)
3. 1000 sq ft of living space, but we opened up to the outdoors. Cozy in the Winter and ever so spacious in the summer.
4. Dishwasher
5. Microwave
6. Television (I had a TV addiction)
7. Extra kitchen space
8. Hallways
9. Storage space (we gave away most of our extra stuff when we moved, and now we have a reason not to accumulate more stuff)
So all this allowed us to put up solar with no additional cost to the construction. Now if we could only get the world to cost shift what we spend on weapons we could cure hunger, poverty, and provide an education for every child in the world.
To paraphrase John Lennon
If everyone in the world wanted peace as much as they do a cell phone we would all know everlasting peace.
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