Solar Energy - You Light Up My Life

Solar Energy and other Calculators

The wife and I sat together by the computer. She read off the electric bills and I typed them into an Excel spreadsheet. Did I mention that we’ve been working together for forty years? Our electric bill has been $1,511.58 during the last twelve months. Makes you think, should we not trim the house so well at Christmas time? That’s out of the question. The grandkids love it.

Ipso facto, we have $1,511.58, $126.00 per month, to spend on solar - - if we can eliminate our electric bill. No. I don’t exactly know what "Ipso facto" means. Perry Mason used to say it…and the judge listened. So it’s back to the internet for all things information. I visited a loan calculator at

http://www.1728.org/calcloan.htm

For a payment of $126.00 per month, we can borrow almost $6,926.00 at 3.5% for 5 years. A search for Solar Energy financing took me to the St. Louis County website,

http://www.stlouiscountysaves.com/ . Exciting news! St. Louis County will loan you up to $10,000 at 3.5% for ten years. Could it be that switching to solar energy would be free?

How many Kilowatts (KW) do I need to generate 14657 Kilowatt hours (KWh)? That’s what the wife and I used to light up our lives last year. You’re right. You Light Up My Life is a Debbie Boone song from the 70’s. It’s been covered by everyone from Leann Rimes to Whitney Houston. The songwriter was Joe Brooks, but I’m, once again, off topic. Do not go to the following website.

http://energysystems.princeton.edu/EnergyResources/GenerElectPower__Shal... Something that I learned about the internet is that, if the website address (url) is very long, it is going to be that much more difficult to find the information for which you are looking. When the children want the short and sweet answer, they ask their mom. By the way, the children never ask me questions. Do go to http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/calculators/PVWATTS/version1/US/Missouri/St_Louis.html . Looks like another long web address. Actually, I started at http://rredc.nrel.gov and drilled down to the other. I never did get that "drilling down" techno term - - until now. It’s like you are drilling for oil, for treasure. There it was. I substituted values for my generation station until I found that a 10KW system would give me 12,648 Kilowatt hours. If I install a 10KW system (that’s 10000 watts), Ameren Missouri will write me a check for $20,000.00. It’s about time, we turned things around and they write me a check.

I’m almost ready to face down the pushy sales guy.