Just thought I’d break the radio silence on the blog by posting an update on our first month of solar power in our new build house.
First though, our family is settling nicely into our new location. A small town of 2,000 or so in semi-rural Northland. Our eldest daughter has started school, and our youngest son is currently at home with mum. Daycare spaces aren’t available until August. So during this time my wife is a full time CEO, Manager, health and safety champion, cleaner (and more) of the household. Closer to August she may look to find some part-time work. Meanwhile myself, I am finally detaching myself from my full-time job and solely concentrating on my financial planning and advice business. Working one job instead of two will really help with creating more time for family fun. I’ve even signed up to the local tennis club, playing a sport I haven’t played in around 20 years or so. It’s been great to meet the locals and get to relive one of my favourite things to do as a kid.
But dayum, the build was expensive. I sometimes wonder if I need to work harder for longer, but every time I find myself considering working more, I snap out of it with the thought that these kids of ours are never going to be young again. This time really is worth more than anything. Sacrificing money for time after a build that went around $200,000 over budget is a tough decision and does make things tight for us for a while, but I know we will be glad we made the call. I will post more about the cost of the build, in all its gory details, in the coming weeks.
So onto the solar results…..
first month power bill with solar panels
February was an amazing month of sunshine in the area. What an introduction to our new location. We had two days of minimal rain and the rest of the month was mostly sunshine. We obviously can’t expect this year round, but solar panels in February produced 980kwh of electricity.
We used 643 Kwh of electricity for the month. This is much lower than my estimates of around 875 per month. However, 875 is an average and we are in February, possibly the month of the year that uses the least electricity with no heating or drying required. It seems like we used a lot though. We have ceiling fans running through the house at night to cool off before bed. We also have electrical equipment running all hours for the home security system and of course the solar system too. With two young kids of course we have a lot of washing to do too. A couple of loads a day. I also spend most days at home for work. So, I’m not sure if we will even get to 875 kwh use in the middle of winter, let alone the average. We shall see. This may be one benefit already of having a new well-built home. We went well above code for insulation and windows which will hopefully help keep heating and cooling costs down.
So one may argue we have bought too many solar panels, since my original calculations were based on higher expected electrical use. I think I will give it at least a year of all four seasons before making that call. At the end of the day though, as the kids grow our use should only get higher from here.
This means that we only consumed 337kwh of the 980kwh of solar produced (980 produced minus 643 consumed). 34% of the solar produced. The other 66% (643kwh) was exported to the grid. We used 306kwh (643 minus 337) from the grid. We will think about things we can do a bit smarter to use more of the electricity ourselves, instead of exporting and importing to and from the grid. This is because it costs double the rate to consume electricity than what we receive to export electricity with our provider.
This makes out total power pill for February:
306kwh consumed from the grid at 0.3518c = $108
Daily fixed fee of $0.69c x 29 days = $20
TOTAL COSTS = $128
Minus:
643kwh of solar to the grid at 0.17c = $109
TOTAL POWER BILL FOR FEBRUARY = $19
What power companies are best for solar panels?
We decided to go with Meridian Energy. Although they have a have quite a high variable rate of 0.3518c, we were attracted to the low daily fee and the high solar buy back rate relatively speaking. Not only that but we received a $300 credit on sign up.
We also considered Contact Energy, Genesis (our old provider), Electric Kiwi and Flick. Each with their own pros and cons.
Contact energy had the second lowest variable rate (just behind Flick) and they also have 3 hours fee between 9 and 12pm. But their daily fixed fee (as with Flick) was extremely high at $2.60 or so. We felt the savings between 9and 12 pm would not be enough to offset that daily fee. Most of our power is used during the daytime and we aren’t night owls, so didn’t really want to shift our habits either. In addition, Contact only buys back solar at a rate of 8c.
Genesis do very little for solar households. We quickly ruled them out. Their solar buyback is just 12c and their daily fee and variable fee higher than Meridian’s. Half price power between 9pm and 7am but not much is being used then anyway.
I thought Electric Kiwi would be nice with their free hour of power, but not so. They also have half price power between 11pm and 7am but again, use at that time is minimal. Their variable rate was the highest at 0.46 cents. This means, using February numbers, we would have had to pay $141 instead of $108. And the differential would be worse in winter with less solar production and more grid use. In addition, the daily fee is over half of that of Meridian too, meaning $30 instead of $20 for February. Their buyback rate is 12.5 cents meaning we would have received $80 instead of $109. That is $70 more with Electric Kiwi before the hour of power is included. I don’t think an hour of power per day would go close to making up that difference.
Finally, Flick Electric was probably our closest consideration after Meridian and before Contact. Flick has a very high daily rate of $2.70, but a low variable rate of 0.254 cents. Their half price power is better than others too since it is off peak hours which includes 11am to 5pm weekdays and all weekend when we are home. That was very attractive to us. But they had no introductory credit nor any solar buy back. Basically, we would not receive a cent for any electricity we sent back to the grid. I wasn’t a fan of that!
How much have solar panels saved us year on year?
Last February our power bill was $160 in a house just over one third the size. It’s great to see the benefit of solar panels, albeit in arguably the best month of the year, from someone who was initially a skeptic. 88% spent less on power from one year to the next is a great start.
We also decided to move our mortgage lending from ANZ to Westpac too. We found Westpac much more accommodating and willing to lend. ANZ had far too many hoops by comparison. What this also meant was instead of a 3 year solar loan at 1%, we were able to get a 5 year solar loan at 0%. Further helping the case for solar panels.
I may look to provide further updates 6 months and 1 year in if anyone is interested. If there is anything else you want me to include in these reports let me know too.
Until next time, when I bare all and share how much it cost to build a home in 2024. Spoiler alert: A lot.