Solar Journey

My Solar Journey: Why I chose the most expensive quote

I’ve been thinking about solar for my house for about 10 years, but it never quite stacked up financially. Unlike Australia, where subsidies have driven uptake to nearly 40% of homes (if only), New Zealand sits at around 3%.

However, I believe we are at a tipping point. High electricity costs combined with 0-1% green home loans mean solar now stacks up on its own with a payback < 5 years.

My experience was positive and eye-opening. We received three quotes, all within +/-5% for a standard 10kW system + battery option. However, the engineer in me wasn’t satisfied with the standard system; I needed to do the calculations on marginal gains to make it as efficient as possible.

We modeled 5-6 different scenarios, increasing capacity it by bit to see how it affected the financial return. We don’t have a true North facing roof so played around with split panel design, kW installed, battery size etc…

The result? We actually went with one of the most expensive options: 14.25kW of panels and 13.5kWh of battery storage and panels split between NE and West orientation.

Counter-intuitively, this higher upfront cost offered the quickest payback period compared to the cheaper, smaller systems. We also optimized the panel split across the roof to squeeze out every bit of solar gain.

The Lesson: A standard package will work fine, however without asking the right questions and stress-testing the scenarios, we found that “going big” was actually the smartest financial move (hopefully…).