T
17

Just watched my neighbor's solar panels pay for themselves in 4 years exactly

I'm over in Portland and have been tracking my neighbor's solar setup since he installed it in 2020. He put up 18 panels on his south facing roof, total cost after tax credits was like $14,500. Last week he showed me his power bill spreadsheet. Zero electric bills since May 2021, plus he sold back enough to the grid to cover the whole system cost by last month. Made me actually crunch numbers on my own roof. Has anyone else seen real payback timelines that short in less sunny places?
2 comments

Log in to join the discussion

Log In
2 Comments
dakota_king80
Man that's rough to hear because those numbers are genuinely impressive but so location dependent. I'm over in Massachusetts and my cousin's system took almost 7 years to break even because we get so much cloud cover and snow. Feels like the whole solar payoff thing is such a gamble based on where you live and how aggressive your utility company is with net metering. Some places are just naturally going to see faster returns and it sucks when you're not in one of those spots.
9
jesse_burns8
Take those sunny Portland numbers with a grain of salt.
4