www.solardave.com SolarDave: What is the payback time for a solar panel system (4KW) in Colorado? Sam Weaver: 4kWatts is about average and I will generally say something like 14 to 18 years. And it depends on all types of factors like exactly how you roof is tilted but to take the guess work out of that use this financial analysis and plug in the specifics of the customer and the shading that have and I will present a payoff graph and that payoff graph will show for that customer in that house with the average price electricity increase that we have seen over the last 5 years where their payback will actually be. Another thing that we do, you can either look at the payback that you get just from the electricity saving you get or the way home assessors do to say their is value of having this energy saving device on your roof and the rule of thumb that they use is $20 dollars in value for every $1 of avoided cost. I think that number is a little bit high and that is from a 1999 national assessors document that is how they say to treat energy saving devices and I do a second plot – this shows that if you assume you get $15 in net increased home value per dollar of savings it says you will pay this system off in 8 years. So in other words the system value actually holds its value well as the price of electricity does up over time so it is the kind of thing where as long as I stay in this house for 8 years or more I probably made my money back on it the system.
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