Friday, February 5, 2016

Why Solar?

Many of you will have already noticed that we have solar panels on the roof at the office and you might be thinking that I have “Gone Green” despite my previous blogs regarding climate change.  Actually, that would not be correct.  I am a firm non-believer in global warming as I stated before.  I believe there are variations in our climate that are definitely not primarily caused by man/made issues.  Mother nature is the one who controls the planet for us visitors and in 10 million years (a blink of an eye to Mother nature) we will all be gone and she will still be here doing her thing without us.  Instead, the reason for our solar panels is primarily financial.  While most of you that have residential SMUD service you pay between 11 and 12 cents per kilowatt hour our rates can be almost 30 cents a kilowatt hour.  That leaves me with a $1000.00 a month SMUD bill pretty much all year round on a building that is approximately 3500 square feet.  We have already completed many title 24 processes to try to decrease our bills, like our R-58 attic insulation and new HVAC unit.  Therefore, it is now time to hop onto the solar power band wagon to cut our costs. We use the Sacramento county Ygrene program for financing so I can get the tax credits as well as writing off the financing in order to make the project affordable.  I would not say that the process is been devout of challenges.  But I firmly believe that it will pay off for itself in the end. As for those of you that are contemplating solar I do agree with my SMUD advisor that chasing pennies with dollars is not a great idea. Do everything you can to save energy costs prior to attempting solar. You would be surprised how high efficiency appliances or insulation, new HVAC and windows or shade trees, etc. can cut your bills.  But if you do decide that solar is the way to go, shop around there are tons of suppliers and a huge variation in prices and features.


See you at my next blog.

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