It doesn’t take a genius to figure out if solar is right for you, in fact in most cases it doesn’t even take a calculator or Excel spreadsheet. So what is the real 411 on solar panels and is it worth it in NZ.
I’m happy to be proven wrong and get into a detailed discussion at any time to calculate the numbers to prove either side of the discussion, but I’m yet to be swayed by anyone's numbers. In probably 95% of all cases solar panels are a waste of money and you would be better off not getting them. There are some very simple ways to cut your electricity bills in half that are much cheaper than spending thousands of dollars on a system or signing up to an expensive subscription and I touch on how to do it in this article and this article. Both of these articles show how to save costs on your power bill to save hundreds of dollars per month and have an ROI (Return On Investment) of only 1 or 2 months compared to solar which is often 5–20 years.
If you are buying solar panels for the environmental benefit then you are in the wrong country. Sure it makes sense in Australia where only 29% of the power in the grid is renewable so for every solar panel you put on the roof it means there is less coal being burned and less CO2 put into the atmosphere. But in New Zealand, 82% of our grid is already renewable and the entire of the South Island is 100% renewable so you can’t argue that it’s of environmental benefit putting them in the South Island.
Many people think that it will save them money and offset their power bill significantly, but unfortunately, the numbers just don’t stack up. If it did stack up we would have massive solar farms in NZ built on cheap farmland where companies set them up in bulk, reducing the cost per unit for both procurement and installation. If it doesn’t make sense to do this at scale, why would it possibly make sense to do thousands of little one-off installations while simultaneously paying commissions to salespeople?
It just doesn’t add up.
If you are fully off-grid and it is going to cost tens of thousands of dollars to have the linesman connect you to the grid than 100% I would look at a solar system with batteries but in most other situations I’d say no to solar. Passive House Plus would be the only other time to look at it but even then you are increasing your carbon footprint to get a better-looking plague on the wall.
The capital expenditure to put a system in place is very high and I believe a large percentage of people who put systems into their homes never get their ROI back at all. Many people don’t utilise the power generated during the day so they feed it back to the grid at a fraction of what others are paying or they opt to buy expensive batteries to store the power for later use. I could run the same argument for batteries as this solar argument.
So if you do have solar or are looking to get solar I would just ask this question. . . WHY?
It doesn't reduce your carbon footprint in NZ
It doesn’t guarantee you cost savings vs the 2 articles above
It doesn’t have a good ROI
So why put them in?
