So with solar, we find that most people will get a return in of anywhere from sort of two and a half to five years, depending on your usage. Depending on whether it's a residential installation or a commercial installation, depending on time of usage. Payback periods can vary a little bit depending on whether it's a business or if it's a homeowner. Depends on your time of usage, depends on your energy pattern and your retailer. Most people generally cut their power bills and get a return on their investment, in around a sort of three to four year mark, some a little bit quicker, some a little bit longer.
So five, six years ago, people just wanted to buy solar and cut their power bills. As the industry's developed we've sort of realised there's more and more of a demand for being able to monitor that solar power. If there's a problem you don't want to have to just wait three months till you get your next power bill. It's important that you're alerted to a problem straight away. Smart Meter enables you to be able to see not only how much power has been produced, but also how much power you're using in the house, how much power you're buying from the grid, or even better how much power you're selling to the grid. It really helps you get a grip of when to run the certain appliances, make sure your pull's not starting too early, make sure that you're timing your air-con usage correctly, and things like that. And all that does is it helps you save more money.
We find that a lot of the time when people come to us they essentially have this sort of idea that solar power is going to be about three thousand, three and a half thousand dollars, because essentially that that's all they know. They see the ads on the TV for the budget dealers and that's fine. But when they start to do a bit of research and look at the problems with these systems and the importance with regard to quality, they soon realise it does cost a little bit more, not a massive amount, but you do get a system that will last an awful lot longer installed by a company, that's going to be around to service the issues, if there's anything that pops up.
What type of payback period could you typically expect from a solar power system investment?
Video Transcript