Two years with a dream fulfilled

Of all the things I’ve done since Nigel died, the thing I’m happiest about is having had a solar power system installed at my house, which happened two years ago yesterday (the photo above is from that post two years ago). It was about fulfilling a dream Nigel and I shared in a way I could do it without him, but it turned out it’s also saved me money: My power bills over a year are less than half of what they’d be without the solar power system, and much less than that in summer. When I blogged about this two years ago, I said, “This will matter a lot when I retire.” I read recently that there’s a bit of a boom in NZ with people doing this, as I did. as they near retirement, and for the reason I mentioned two years ago. I’m a trendsetter!

Over the past two years I’ve learned to manage my power use to maximise return on investment, and although that was never a consideration when I had the system installed, it sure is nice. I mentioned above that my annual power bills are less than half of what they’d be without the system, and that doesn’t sound like much, right? That’s only a part of the story: By maximising my use of power in the daytime, when my electricity is free, there’s a whole lot of electricity I don’t have to buy, and that’s actually worth much more than half my bill.

My actual savings are far more than half because the credits I get for the power I generate are far less than what I pay to buy electricity, and so, it makes sense for me to use the power I generate. All of which means that, depending on the time of year and weather, my electricity charges are actually at *most* a third of what they’d be otherwise, something I know because I made spreadsheets to track all this in detail (and I’ll soon have the data even more precise—still working on that).

So, two years ago yeterday I realised a dream Nigel and I shared in the only way I could do it without him, something that aligned with the values we shared. That’s more than enough, of course, but it turned out to be a wise financial decision, too. It’s no wonder I’m happy with it.