Happy spouse = happy home. And glad you chose to choose American despite the cost. That's dedication.
Congrats and welcome to solar!

If you’re doing solar, do it right and that’s purchasing. ROI is 3-7 years ideally
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“I like the idea of living your life as responsible as possible, that’s a good way of putting it.
I don’t think it matters in the end, renewables will overtake things eventually and it will be economically viable to the majority, its happening. We are just the early adopters.”
I don’t see myself as an alarmist or being overly freaked out by climate change. I think its a major problem though and I generally feel the same as quoted above. I think early adopters play a vital role though. I wasn’t on the electric vehicle bandwagon until my brother in law got one and I was like “whoa, I can’t believe electric cars already exist and I didn’t know about it.” I think getting solar or driving an electric car can have that kind of effect on others and can play a big part in the eventual success of these changes and new technologies.
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Sure, we all can live in a tent on the beach and fish for ourselves if that’s the argument. We can also live a specific chosen lifestyle in a responsible manner. I would daresay our family’s carbon footprint is as optimized as possible for our chosen vices. Trying again not to get into that tangent.
The question was whether Solar makes financial sense. The economics works out for those I outlined above.
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I guess I just don’t agree with the notion that “because its not cheap, I’m not going to do it.” My brother in law is that way sometimes and it drives me nuts. My electric is 5.5 cents/kwh now, but I’m not going solar just to save money. But, that doesn’t mean I don’t want to see these technologies become cheap. I do believe it will one day be cheap enough that even the thriftiest people on this site will want to go solar, but that’s going to take time. I don’t think we have the luxury of time anymore. We need to reduce our carbon emissions now. And yes, you’re right that there are plenty of other things we could do now that would have a big impact as well and that’s great, people should do those things too. Our furnace and a/c are brand new and super efficient. We’re not going to be running our AC at full blast, in fact we may just use a small window unit in our bedroom from now on. We have insulation. We have storm windows. We don’t eat beef. We use public transit whenever possible. We voted against trump, although that didn’t work out too well. I drive an all electric car. We have 100% LED lighting. My tankless hot water heater is super efficient. We live downtown in a walkable neighborhood and we ride our bikes and shop local as much as possible. These may be small contributions and probably laughable to some of you, but at least I can say I tried.
All that being said, however, I also believe that if everyone did everything they could to reduce their carbon emissions now, it still wouldn’t be enough. We need a big fat carbon tax program to reduce industrial emissions on a giant scale. That’s obviously not going to happen under the current administration so I feel like in the mean time I need to do everything I personally can to help.
The funny thing is that globally speaking countries like China, Germany, Norway, are making huge strides in cleaning up their energy production and are going to end up being the example to follow very soon. The US is going to be left behind for the next 4 years.
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6.3 — Nice. That’s like FL too. dirt cheap. The lowest after all the fees is about 17-19 cents/kWh here in Cali.
FYI: Time Of Use is coming to Cali regardless we choose solar or not. This year they flattened to 2 tiers+superuser 400% baseline (~800-1000 kwH/mo) then move everyone to TOU in 2019.
You’d be surprised how much you may like an EV. They come in all shapes and sizes and performance is quite good. CV gives you $3000 right off the top. Rare to find such gifts just lying around to be utilized.
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