The past few months have been busy: work, kids, the new dog, travel back to Canada, etc…. but during all this activity we have been researching and looking at getting Solar Panels installed in our house. Today our Solar Panel Installer finished the installation of our solar panels on our roof and believe it or not I am excited about this.
As a sidenote – if you are looking at getting Solar Panels in Melbourne, I can highly recommend Glen Clark. Out of all the people and companies we spoke to, he was by far the most thorough in providing details and information to us. It may be good sales skills, but he was the person who wanted us to make an informed decision instead of just trying to get our money. He delivered what he said he would and in the timeframes he said as well – we have been really happy going with Glen for this job.
So how did we end up getting solar panels on our roof? A few months ago, we received our electricity bill and it was higher than normal, and by higher than normal I mean almost double what is statistically has been over the past 2 years. So when we called our Energy Provider to ask about the bill and see if we can find out what happened – we pretty much were told “that’s what the bill is, tough luck” – or at least that’s how it felt anyway.
This one conversation with the Energy Company’s Customer Service triggered the thought in my head that I did not want to be in such a one sided arrangement. It got me thinking that the price of electricity is not going to go down, it is a limited resource that is only going to go up and as something that is controlled by a handful of energy companies they really are calling all the shots in terms of pricing and service. So in the end, thanks to my Energy Company for opening my eyes to this.
We got 20 panels on our roof which should bring our electricity bills to close to $0.00 and who knows we may be able to generate enough power to sell kW back to the grid. I like that we are going to save money by installing these solar panels, I think they they are an investment that is going to pay for itself, but the great thing about going through this exercise is that it has caused us to really look at our electricity usage and see how we can be more efficient in our daily lives. Two big examples are that the beer fridge in the shed has been unplugged and the dryer is being replaced by a clothesline.
The savings are great, but it is also good to know we are being green and doing our small part to help the environment.
