This month we celebrate 7 years of solar PV on our house!  I was an early-ish adopter of grid-tied solar PV.  It was installed in September 2007, and has generated a whopping 26,001 kWh over those 7 years.  All without a glitch.

Yours truly, turning on the system for the first time – 7 years ago

That is an average of 10 kWh a day, which considering the system size of 2.8 kW, is fairly good.  During winter on a cloudy day it generates about 2 to 4 kWh, and in summer on sunny day we can generate up to 24 kWh.

We use between 10 – 12 kWh a day in our home, and the rest is exported to the grid.  I get paid 66 cents feed-in tariff per kWh that I export and now pay about 25 cents for every kilowatt-hour that I import from our retailer.

And the benefits?  Well, lower electricity bills for one and a big grin on my face every time I look at the car port roof!

We also are very precious with electricity in our home because everyone is aware that we generate our most of our own.  We use it sparingly because we know that if we can live within our means – consumption wise – we don’t pay anything for it.

View from our gate when it was first installed

Even though the rebates have change since I first bought our system, and the feed-in tariff has been scaled back by all state governments, it is still worth getting solar on your roof.  Just as the million other residential solar owners around Australia!  Even without these government incentives, you still lower your power bill, and therefore your greenhouse gas emissions if you haven’t paid a little extra for GreenPower.

Obviously, the bigger the system, the more electricity you will generate.  If I had the money at the time for a larger system, I would have filled the entire roof space.  They are just so cheap now.  Unfortunately, because of the rebate at the time, I cannot add any more generating capacity to this system legally.  If I did, I would have to pay back the $8000 government rebate I received, and forfeit the premium feed-in tariff.  It is not worth my while, plus we don’t use that much electricity anyway.

View from our main roof

There you have it.  7 years old, and many more solar birthdays to come.  If you want to read the post that I wrote all those years ago after it was installed, click-through to “The Solar Revolution – Photovoltaic“.

So chime in via comment if you have solar PV on your house.  Share with us when it was installed and how big is your system.  I am sure those sitting on the fence would love the encouragement!  Also let me know if you are pleased with your system or you have had issues with the installer.  Call them out.  Happy for a name and shame as well!

Owning solar makes every sunny day even more wonderful!