Are solar panels really worth it?

In 2019, Charlotte & Tom who were looking to get a solar system put on their Perth home contacted us. They decided to choose Termico Solar Generation for their install and Charlotte has been kind enough to share with us their solar journey so far!

Thanks for sharing Charlotte and happy reading to you all!

How much could I truly save with solar?

Like thousands of Australian’s I contemplated over whether or not to put a solar system on my home. While I knew it was no brainer solar WOULD save us money I stayed on the fence, as I wasn’t sure that the savings would be worth the initial system cost.

I finally bit the bullet back at the end of 2019, and as it’s been over a year now decided to take some time to review the figures to find out how much we have actually saved by moving to solar. I was amazed by the results and wanted to share my experience for those of you still contemplating whether to go solar or not!

So a bit about me & my home……

I live in a 4x2 located in Yanchep, just north of Perth. It is just me, my husband Tom and our 2 dogs at home. Both Tom and I work full time, though I do work from home 2 days a week.

We do have a swimming pool but apart from that, I would say we run a fairly standard household in terms of the electrical appliances we use.

Life before & after Solar

Before we installed solar power to our home our bills over 12 months averaged out at approximately $397 across the 60-65 day synergy billing cycle. I have always been energy conscious, so to keep our bills down I would only run the aircon on very hot days, and tried to limit power usage where possible.

Towards the end of 2019 we contacted Termico Solar Generation to discuss solar options for our home. We decided to take advantage of their special at the time and signed up for a 6.6kW Solar System. Note while we could have gone with a smaller system we decided we wanted to go with the larger system to ‘future proof’ ourselves.

Termico Solar Generation were fantastic, they talked us through our options, applied for all the approvals we needed and kept us updated. On install day they arrived on time and the guys that did the install were friendly and very professional. I could not fault them; the team was great and a pleasure to deal with!

Below is a year’s summary of our bills prior to our solar system being installed. Across the year we spent a total of $2382 on power!

Note: December 2018 data was used for my comparison as our solar system was installed during the billing cycle for December 19.

Since having our solar system installed I have made a few tweaks to my daily routine so that I am using appliances where possible when the suns up. However, my aircon is no longer reserved for the 40 plus days and I’m enjoying using it whenever I want without dreading a massive power bill.

The same goes for the heating, though the solar system doesn’t generate as much power in the winter, I have definitely been using the heating more than I would have before I had solar. I even use it more in the evenings now as well, again I know the solar isn’t generating any power then, but as our bills have been so much cheaper than previous years I’ve just become more relaxed about using our heating / cooling systems. Apart from that everything else about our household has remained the same.

Despite my new found freedom of using the aircon unit I was amazed to see that our total cost of power for 2020 came it at $1106.97. That is an incredible $1275.03 saving from the previous year!

And yes we were home & carrying out all normal activities during the billing cycle for December. From reviewing the usage reports on my GoodWe app it appears our system was just taking full advantage of the Perth weather and generating at its max during this period, creating some great savings for us!

In addition to our $1275.03 saving we have also received back $325.02 in credits to our bank account from Synergy since having our solar installed.

As mentioned previously both myself and my husband are out the house the majority of the time and therefore I assumed the majority of our energy was being used in the evenings. Therefore, while I was expecting to save I was not expecting to save so much.

For those of you looking to save and cut back on household bills I highly recommend moving to solar power and using Termico Solar Generation. Recently we had some power outages in my area which resulted in my solar system shutting down. I hadn’t noticed and probably wouldn’t have until I received a bill from Synergy. However I received a call from the lovely team at Termico that day to advise THEY had noticed my system had gone offline and they talked me through how to bring it back online again. Now that is what I call service!

I am so happy we decided to go solar, and that we choose Termico solar my only regret is that we didn’t do it sooner!