Looking for advice on where to start; my situation is a bit more complex than the scenarios I've read about so far due to my existing system, so thought I'd start with this post.
Will caveat up front that I'm not a "green for the sake of green" person, I was trained as an electrical engineer so I like the tech, and I get the long term benefits of going green, but I'm a pragmatic finance oriented guy so I need things to also make financial sense before I proceed.
My situation:
I recently relocated to upstate New York and bought my 15 year old house for a song (about 30% of construction cost) because the house was built at the peak of the last economic cycle and the city and local businesses have been in decline or slow growth mode since. Homes don't really appreciate in this market regardless of what you do to them so any investment you make is typically gone. The guy that built my house was very wealthy and was a techie, so my house is large and was built with high end commercial-only (at the time) tech. Much of that tech has become obsolete or has trickled down into residential applications now. I've been opportunistically replacing systems as they fail with new and inexpensive tech (swapped out whole-house stereo / CD / DVD / Direct TV entertainment with roku / sonus, swapped plasma TVs with LCDs, swapped out networked thermostats with Nests, etc) to lower operating costs, save energy, and achieve (someday) an iphone controlled / connected home.
Opportunistic is important because life has "happened" repeatedly such that the longest I've lived in a given domicile over the past 20 years is 3 years (I've been bounced from my homes for work / marriage / kids). I'm hoping for something much longer this time around (which is why I relocated), but hard to read the tea leaves. Therefore even though I have a strong interest in investing in my house, I'd like whatever I do to have an ROI of 1 year or less or "zero cash investment + net lower monthly cost" so I don't get burned when life happens again.
Current electrical system:
15 year old but barely used G75F1S Olympian (Caterpillar) generator set, producing 63 kW from natural gas, has instant-on feature in case of power failure. Whole house UPS, which is a daisy chained set of Eaton 9170+ units, good for 18kva in the base unit and maybe another 6kva in the attached unit, the second piece which has been unused for a while due to battery failure (and at $500 per battery x 12 batteries I'm not replacing them until I have to). 200, possibly 400 but I'm not brave enough to poke it with an ammeter, amp service - largest residential wire I've ever seen - into two main breaker panels, which chains to 2 more panels in the room with the UPS, which also has the home network, home entertainment center (what's left of it anyway), and the overbuilt commercial grade phone, lighting, and security systems.
All in my house consumes about 40,000 kwh annually after my tweaks, which is probably about 30% to 50% of what it used to consume. I've got a goal to bring it down to 20,000 by next year - I've bought the eMonitor software over the weekend to start monitoring exactly where this energy is spent and to cut it back further over the coming months.
Recently I discovered that my backup generator isn't running. Pretty sure it's from disuse (this has happened in the past). However, since it's a commercial unit and I'm in a smallish town without much industry, the closest repair guy is 2 hours away and charges a few hundred dollars per hour, so I'm in for almost $1,000 before he even starts looking at it. Couple that with the high cost UPS and the fact I want newer / cheaper tech and don't need that kind of power, and would prefer a more green solution all else being equal, I'm pretty motivated to explore a solar panel + battery, such as powerwall, solution.
There are a lot of factors which make this a poor financial decision: big house, big KWH requirement, energy prices are very stable for past 10 years and relatively reasonable. However, I have to believe there must be some potential offsets to explore, either because the house is already wired to work with a generator and batteries, or perhaps I can sell the UPS and generator (still on the market for sale at about ~$50k if you bought them new, so maybe worth $10k - $20k now?) to offset the cost of a solar system.
Where can I start to figure this puzzle out? Any tips?
I have linked up with the local solar community at the nearby college and will be talking in local installers in 2 weeks, but I want to be armed with knowledge and want to understand what I might be able to do with my existing generator / UPS before I have those meetings.
Thanks!!
Will caveat up front that I'm not a "green for the sake of green" person, I was trained as an electrical engineer so I like the tech, and I get the long term benefits of going green, but I'm a pragmatic finance oriented guy so I need things to also make financial sense before I proceed.
My situation:
I recently relocated to upstate New York and bought my 15 year old house for a song (about 30% of construction cost) because the house was built at the peak of the last economic cycle and the city and local businesses have been in decline or slow growth mode since. Homes don't really appreciate in this market regardless of what you do to them so any investment you make is typically gone. The guy that built my house was very wealthy and was a techie, so my house is large and was built with high end commercial-only (at the time) tech. Much of that tech has become obsolete or has trickled down into residential applications now. I've been opportunistically replacing systems as they fail with new and inexpensive tech (swapped out whole-house stereo / CD / DVD / Direct TV entertainment with roku / sonus, swapped plasma TVs with LCDs, swapped out networked thermostats with Nests, etc) to lower operating costs, save energy, and achieve (someday) an iphone controlled / connected home.
Opportunistic is important because life has "happened" repeatedly such that the longest I've lived in a given domicile over the past 20 years is 3 years (I've been bounced from my homes for work / marriage / kids). I'm hoping for something much longer this time around (which is why I relocated), but hard to read the tea leaves. Therefore even though I have a strong interest in investing in my house, I'd like whatever I do to have an ROI of 1 year or less or "zero cash investment + net lower monthly cost" so I don't get burned when life happens again.
Current electrical system:
15 year old but barely used G75F1S Olympian (Caterpillar) generator set, producing 63 kW from natural gas, has instant-on feature in case of power failure. Whole house UPS, which is a daisy chained set of Eaton 9170+ units, good for 18kva in the base unit and maybe another 6kva in the attached unit, the second piece which has been unused for a while due to battery failure (and at $500 per battery x 12 batteries I'm not replacing them until I have to). 200, possibly 400 but I'm not brave enough to poke it with an ammeter, amp service - largest residential wire I've ever seen - into two main breaker panels, which chains to 2 more panels in the room with the UPS, which also has the home network, home entertainment center (what's left of it anyway), and the overbuilt commercial grade phone, lighting, and security systems.
All in my house consumes about 40,000 kwh annually after my tweaks, which is probably about 30% to 50% of what it used to consume. I've got a goal to bring it down to 20,000 by next year - I've bought the eMonitor software over the weekend to start monitoring exactly where this energy is spent and to cut it back further over the coming months.
Recently I discovered that my backup generator isn't running. Pretty sure it's from disuse (this has happened in the past). However, since it's a commercial unit and I'm in a smallish town without much industry, the closest repair guy is 2 hours away and charges a few hundred dollars per hour, so I'm in for almost $1,000 before he even starts looking at it. Couple that with the high cost UPS and the fact I want newer / cheaper tech and don't need that kind of power, and would prefer a more green solution all else being equal, I'm pretty motivated to explore a solar panel + battery, such as powerwall, solution.
There are a lot of factors which make this a poor financial decision: big house, big KWH requirement, energy prices are very stable for past 10 years and relatively reasonable. However, I have to believe there must be some potential offsets to explore, either because the house is already wired to work with a generator and batteries, or perhaps I can sell the UPS and generator (still on the market for sale at about ~$50k if you bought them new, so maybe worth $10k - $20k now?) to offset the cost of a solar system.
Where can I start to figure this puzzle out? Any tips?
I have linked up with the local solar community at the nearby college and will be talking in local installers in 2 weeks, but I want to be armed with knowledge and want to understand what I might be able to do with my existing generator / UPS before I have those meetings.
Thanks!!
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