Why is it the best time to invest in solar power?

With the increasing population and degrading of resources, we are in short of basic resources. Energy is one of them cause it takes a huge investment to increase the output. However, that’s when solar power saves us.

Solar power is possibly the most amazing energy resource available to humankind. Cause it’s free and the sunlight never finishes. With that said, investing in solar is getting affordable in the recent few years as well. Here’s why it’s the best time ever to invest in solar power:

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Decreasing Subsidies, vs Price drop

With many technologies it can make sense to wait for the prices to come down. And the prices of Solar systems have come down over the years.

In Australia this price drop is counteracted by the decrease in Subsidy the government pays every Year. Currently, the subsidy is around $600 per KW. But this decreases by 1/13 every year until the subsidy is gone in 2030. So every year for a 5KW system there is maybe a $250 price increase from the reduced subsidy.

As a result solar prices have stayed pretty similar for a number of years now.

Feed in tariff higher now than ever, decent return just selling it back

Now in 2018, most of Australia is now getting over 11c per kWh for the power you sell back. It’s not as good as 2011 when you can get 60c in some parts of Australia, but it’s better than 2016 when feed in tariffs were as low as 6c. This increase is due to the close of many coal power stations, government supporting renewables more and due to recalculating the value of a kwh of electricity.

So back when the feed in tariff was 6c, there was not much benefit selling the power back and buying a big system. And for a household that doesn’t use power during the day it might not make sense to buy solar at all.

However now the economics of it works out that even if you sell all of your power back to the grid your return on investment can be less than 5 years.

There is also talk of feed in tariffs being higher during peak hours of the day.

Better investment than in the bank

The solar systems that we do currently have a payback time of around 4 to 5 years. It can even be as low as 3 years if you consume a lot of power during the day.

Compare that to what you are getting from the bank… 3% on a term deposit. Very few investments in the world have a return as good as a solar system. And even less are safe investments, where as you can be pretty sure the sun is going to rise every day to power your panels.

A 5KW system can save you from between $1000 to $3000 per year. Solar prices aren’t decreasing by that much. If they were then they’d be free in a few years… If you purchased a solar system last year you could be ahead by that much already. That’s enough to fund a small holiday every year.

Why wait to save money.

And if you don’t have money you can easily borrow at a lower rate to save money at a higher rate from your solar system.

Protect against electricity price increases

Electricity prices have been on the rise year on year. Solar is one of the only ways to protect you from that. The savings you get from your solar system will only get better year on year when the rates increase. Have you ever had your electricity company reduce their rates?

Create green jobs/Help the environment/Set example in your community/ People in your street have weighed it up and figured it’s worth it

Yeah, support the future. Feel good and stuff
More and more houses in Australia have it every year. Your neighbours up the road have weighed it up and worked out that it’s worth it. And now it’s only getting better.

Add value to home.
$$$

Protect against price fluctuations of Solar
When the Australian dollar goes up and down, there are big variations of the prices of solar systems.

Wait for batteries? Buy solar first
Whereas solar has a return of say 4-5 years. In 2018 for batteries it’s more like 15+ years, so they aren’t there economically.
You might think that you should wait for batteries to be more economical and do it all in one go. But you can easily buy a solar system and add a battery to it later.
Actually, every solar system in the market can be compatible with batteries.
[Solar]+[Charger]+[Battery]
So you need the solar the “charger” and the battery to make it all work. If you buy solar first you can add one of the many plugs and play batteries that come with a charger such as Tesla 2^nd gen, Sonnen, Enphase etc and it will just work.
With a lead-acid car battery or just some battery cells, you would need to get a separate charger unit to make it work.
And there are also hybrid Inverters where the solar comes with the charger. With Hybrid inverters, we only recommend them if you are doing batteries straight away, because they aren’t compatible with every single battery and if later on you end up getting one of the plugs and play batteries you would have paid extra because you doubled up on the charger.

So really the only reasons not to buy a solar system now
Is that you are moving house soon, your roof is not suitable or… maybe if you are allergic to panels.

-Frank Guo (Staff writer at Space Solar)