We believe in total, that we will most probably pay it off in about four years, which is really surprising to me. I thought it would be longer. And it was actually, it's working out a shorter period of time than what we estimated at the beginning of our conversations. I didn't choose crap. So we just decided, you know, we'd go for the best that we could afford. And we got 18 panels, which is, you know, a little bit over the 5 kilowatt system, but it's paying off and it's working well for us. And we've got a manual hot water switch, that when the sun's beaming and the system's cranking, we just turn the switch on and the sun pays for our hot water.
Well, again, just understanding the terminologies for a start, and that quickly I picked up on. But it was more so the quality of the products, you know. You can get a lot cheaper products and you see it time and time again on TV. You know, you'd be at 5 kilowatt systems for four grand. Well, my attitude is you get what you pay for. And we paid a premium price for a premium product, and we've got a premium product. We love it. One of the things that we've been really pleased to see is our quarterly bills that come through. The one I have in front of me at the moment is showing a $300 credit for 90 days. You know, it wasn't summer. It was from October through to January. So part summer.
It's been a real godsend in the sense of seeing that money come back to us, and helps us pay off the system. We've always had credit. Ever since we've had the system, we've never paid Origin for anything. They paid us for our credits. We are on a relatively good feed in tariff, of 22 cents at the moment. That may change in due course, but at this point in time, that's the rate we're at. We can negotiate, we're free to negotiate with anybody we like, but yeah, we're getting the sun paying for our electricity and it's also putting money in our bank. It's totally exceeding our expectations.
Why should you choose a higher quality solar panel if you're looking to take advantage of your feed-in tariff?
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