In other words, what you save on your electricity bill can outweigh loan repayments.<\/p>\n
Spreading a $20,000 installation over 30 years \u2013 at 5.5% interest \u2013 would result in principal and interest costs of about $41,000, but Casey says solar can still trump that. \u201cIt\u2019ll return you $60,000 by the time those solar panels get to their end of life.\u201d<\/p>\n
However, Casey says the maths is different for every household, and getting the sequence of upgrades right matters.<\/p>\n
The financial calculations differ for every household, and sometimes the best place to start for savings isn\u2019t with solar panels.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe number one piece of economic advice would be electrify all the things in your life, and then you\u2019ll have a fantastic return on the solar that goes on your rooftop,\u201d Casey says.<\/p>\n
Research from Rewiring Aotearoa suggests the savings for a fully electric household \u2013 with electric home heating, hot water, transport, solar and batteries \u2013 could now be around $3000 a year better off, even after accounting for upfront costs and interest on finance. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe more you\u2019re buying from another source \u2026 because it\u2019s gas or petrol or diesel, the more you undermine your solar payback.\u201d <\/p>\n
Casey, who has fully electrified his cherry orchard, says that as someone who drives 30,000km a year, switching to an electric vehicle was \u201can economic slam dunk\u201d. <\/p>\n
But others might be better off starting elsewhere. \u201cI have a friend who has four teenage daughters. The hot water heat pump is by far the best option \u2026 to make sure that they bring down their bills.\u201d<\/p>\n
Watch or listen to the full episode of The Prosperity Project<\/a> for more.<\/p>\n The Prosperity Project is hosted by Nadine Higgins, an experienced broadcaster and financial adviser.<\/p>\n Follow the show at iHeartRadio<\/a>, Apple Podcasts<\/a>, Spotify<\/a> or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes are released every Monday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In other words, what you save on your electricity bill can outweigh loan repayments. Spreading a $20,000 installation…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":511921,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[3225,13038,8831,9442,138,3167,5098,63701,14037,177419,18930,1888,16460,47037,1345,40148,132180,56387,208445,111,139,69,691,107100,30509,3271,254666,4166,21694,17178,6845,376,197,1959],"class_list":["post-511920","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-according","tag-advocate","tag-an","tag-better","tag-business","tag-buy","tag-buying","tag-ditch","tag-electric","tag-electrifying","tag-ev","tag-first","tag-gas","tag-heating","tag-home","tag-install","tag-installing","tag-isnt","tag-necessarily","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-or","tag-panels","tag-replacing","tag-should","tag-smartest","tag-solar","tag-step","tag-systems","tag-vehicle","tag-water","tag-you","tag-your"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511920","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=511920"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/511920\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/511921"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=511920"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=511920"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=511920"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}