The McDougall’s Property in The Hawkes Bay
Kristin Gillies, August 29, 2019
Solar panels: 12 x 264W panels. Inverter: micro-inverter. Total cost: $12,378. Electricity price: $0.30. Solar export price: $0.08. Installation date: March 2017.
The Hawkes Bay region has seen many families reap the benefits of solar power generation, the McDougall family, for instance, state that “it feels good to be using renewable energy” when powering their home via solar power. They mentioned the added benefits that included “reducing reliance on peak electricity generated by burning fossil fuels, so we are reducing our carbon footprint.”
The financial benefits are clearly in favour for the McDougall’s, with a great first year return on investment of 11.48%, they mentioned that by generating their own electricity they'll be using less power from the utility supplier. This immediately translated into savings for their energy bill and they can now feed electricity back to the grid.
In terms of the system performance, the owners are happy that it “mostly it operates itself!” The customer service from the solar installation company was appreciated by the McDougall's, they had this to say “when it was set up it was explained to us by our installer and we have not had to contact him regarding it's operation because, it just works!"
