I live in Phoenix so we've no shortage of sun, and during summer A/C is not a luxury (though keeping it under 80 is)
A former coworker mentioned to me he recently had a 4.8kW solar system installed on his house, he pays $43/mo for it and it has generated ~$170 worth of power since it went online 24 days ago.
I wasn't able to get much more information from him on the topic.. don't know if he leased or financed the panels or what... but he did send me a link to his monitoring account
At the rates I pay, that many kWh still adds up to >$110/mo which is less than the $170 it supposedly saves him but more than twice the $43/mo he pays for the system.
My average monthly electric bill over the past 12 months comes out to $104..
So my question is, am I doing my math wrong here? The way it looks to me is if I'm presently paying around $100 and I generate around $100 worth of juice on average, and I pay the solar co. $43/mo for the panels...
that makes my net electricity cost per month $43 right? Or am I reading that wrong? Plus the panels shade my roof which should slightly reduce A/C load, plus it improves the value of my home, plus it is presumably better for the environment....
Are there any hidden, down the road "gotcha" problems I'm not thinking about?