Going solar at home

I just had a conversation with a friend’s mom and her partner about their neighbour’s solar panel installation. He neighbours installed 3 large panels and it cost them about R30 000. The panels apparently supply enough power to cover their home’s requirements.

It got me thinking about something similar for our house. It’s a lot of money but when you consider increasing prices (28% increase in the near future), constrained supply and blackouts like the one that affected some areas for days recently, it might be worth that cost in the medium term.

I believe the Eskom website contains information about options, rebates and so on. The prospect of not being reliant on the grid is very appealing and if it’s possible to largely disconnect from the grid and run off the panels, your savings in electricity payments could pay it off relatively soon. I have heard a realistic time frame to make your money back is about 6 years or so.

Whatever the details, solar panels are starting to make a lot of sense!