Good work Grizzly! I decided when I retired a few years ago to use some of my payout to do not only a number of things to my house that had needed doing for a long time, but also look at energy use. Amazing as it may sound, in Australia there are hardly any rules about how to make houses energy efficient, at least until recently, and even the new rules are pretty weak (solar hot water bieng a requirement here, but amazingly given the cold winters we have, not double glazing or siting of houses and windows to make use of or avoid the sun). So since my old timber-framed windows were getting on a bit, with one or two showing some rot, and repainting them a pain, I replaced the lot with double glazing, including the back door, and now, with the insulation in the roof, the house stays always at least 5-8 degrees cooler in summer, and warmer in winter (also aided by thick curtains, and pelmets). There have been subsidies for solar panels, although you still have to fork out quite a bit yourself if you want quality rather than the cheap Chinese stuff (but everything is getting cheaper now, and better, even the Chinese). Moreover, here we have a feed-in tariff for every kW produced and fed back into the grid (ie, not a net nr of kWs but *every* kW). So I calculated my average kW use over a year/day and got a system that produces some 50% more, thus providing more than I use and need, and the system (2.1kW) so far has earned me about $1200 dollars in a year, leaving a profit after paying for what I use. I also replaced my 20 year old electric hot water system with a new solar one, which is not only larger but uses those vacuum tubes instead of a panel, very efficient and if you use hot water mainly early in the day it does not use any electricity for boosting at all. Over all, if you want to go solar, it is going to cost money, even with things getting cheaper; but if you are willing to spend that money, at least you can be a bit more convincing about arguing for the environment..... and I like the idea that I do actually create a tiny bit of energy!
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Our decision to do this was pretty much financial all the way, but it really is a win-win situation.
