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Reflections on our First Year of Going Solar & Driving the Cars of the Future

WOW! THIS IS AMAZING!! AND IT FEELS SO GOOD!!

Truly, what a joy it has been to experience driving the cars of the future, and fueling one of them and all our electricity needs with our solar panels. The cars are a hoot! They are a pleasure to drive and so much better than our old ICE (internal combustion engine) vehicles. It has felt so good to know we are using way less gas than we used to, which means less carbon emissions going into the atmosphere. We are also thrilled to know we are harnessing the Nevada sunshine to power our home and the LEAF. Scott and I share a deep love for our little, blue planet and a mutual concern about human impact on the environment. I would say that was the main reason driving our decision to go solar, EV (electric vehicle) and hybrid.

It’s an extra-added bonus to reflect on that decision one year later and see that not only is it good for Mother Nature and more fun for us, it also saves a lot of money! And who doesn’t like to save a lot of money while doing something good at the same time?

Ok, I figure you want me to get down to the nitty gritty, so here it is:

Travis estimated the system would generate approximately 12 megawatts over the course of the year. We actually produced 12.6! NOTE: Our solar system was put into service on February 19, 2019. I figured we have enough data as of this writing to do an annual entry, so I have projected 2/3 of the months of January and February based on the 1/3 of these months for which I have data as of this writing (see below for more details).

We saved $3,570 total, which I’ll break down with more explanation below for those of you who are interested. And, best of all, we saved 22,329 pounds of carbon dioxide from being emitted into Earth’s atmosphere!

I know some of you would like to know about cost recovery. We had run our old ICE vehicles into the ground and had to buy newer vehicles anyway, so we decided to go Hybrid and EV. The LEAF was $11,000–$15,000 less the sale of the Forester for $4,000. (Did I say that used LEAFs are ridiculously cheap?) The Highlander was $47,000. (These figures include sales tax.) So, these cars didn’t cost us any more than we would have spent to replace our old vehicles with ICE models. They cost, interestingly, the same to insure due to much better safety features. Both the EV and the Hybrid are cheaper to maintain than our old ICE’s, in addition to using a lot less gas. Because we had to buy newer vehicles anyway, we don’t consider the cost of the cars as part of our Going Solar expenses. It is interesting to note that it is driving the cars of the future that saves you the most money!

The total cost of the solar panels, EV charger, and installation, net of rebates and tax savings: $14,222. If we average $3,500 per year savings, we will recover this cost in about 4 years. However, keep in mind that installing solar panels and EV chargers increases the value of your home 3%. So, in reality, our panels were paid for the day they were installed!

We again want to express our gratitude to Travis and the guys at Great Basin Solar for the awesome job they did designing and installing our system! They were a dream to work with and convinced us this dream of ours was possible and could be done now and not later. I’m so glad we decided to go ahead! You can find out more about Great Basin Solar at: https://www.greatbasinsolar.com/ .

THE DATA

Electricity Production and Accumulated Credits

Our panels produced 12.6 megawatts, a little over what Travis estimated when he built our system (including projections explained below). We used less than he’d estimated, because we drive the LEAF about 1/2 of average. This resulted in a $233.66 credit with NV Energy for the electricity we produced but did not use. At 9 cents per kilowatt, we have 2.6 megawatts of banked electricity, about 20% of our total production!

Averaging our 2017 and 2018 utility bills, we paid $1269 annually for electricity and gas. This year we paid only $648 for a savings of $621! We decided to look at our total utility bill, since we are now using electric heaters to lower our use of natural gas to heat our home in the winter. This has reduced our gas usage by 20%! The main heater in our house now only comes on in the morning to bring the house up to temperature, then our Ben Franklin gas stove and EdenPure heater take over for the rest of the day. (See below for more information.)

We’d originally estimated we would save $50 per month on electricity use, or $600 per year. We were right in there with our actual savings of $621. Interestingly, gas prices have gone up 17% this year, so even though we are using 20% less, the bill is about the same. However, I suspect that gas prices will continue to rise so the savings will increase over time from lowering our gas use. Electricity costs, probably due to increasing use of renewables in Nevada, have remained steady.

The above two graphs off our SolarEdge show our production over the life of the system, which went into service on February 19, 2019. The 2019 graph is missing 2/3 of February and all of January. I used these two graphs to project the missing data as follows: 700 for January 750 for February. In the 2019 graph above, February shows 250 kilowatts for 1/3 of the month, so 500 kilowatts are missing in addition to the 700 for January, for a total of 1200 kilowatts. Add that to the 11.36 megawatts shown on the graph and you get 12.56 or 12.6 megawatts.

Our December power bill shows the dramatic increase in our use that happens in December and January when we have our Christmas lights on, plug in an extra refrigerator for holiday parties and use electric heaters to zone heat our home. The latter is new idea we had when we realized how much electricity we’d banked and that natural gas costs went up 17% over last year! Looking at the bill, you can see that we finally used some of our bank: $77.97.

We added an EdenPure infrared, copper heater to our dining room/kitchen this winter. Scott had it in storage, so we decided to put it to good use! It is keeping the area where I work much warmer, and our kitchen. This is an efficient heater (uses 1-1.5 kilowatts per hour). It has a nice, quiet hum and doesn’t get hot to the touch. Scott also uses a small Lasko electric heater in the bedroom in the mornings, while he is reading and sipping coffee. These electric heaters have reduced the amount of natural gas we are using with our gas heaters by 20%! It is now much toastier in the areas where we hang out, without needing to heat unused areas of our home.

Overall, we are thrilled with how the net metering with NV Energy works. It looks like we will be able to continue to provide all the electricity we need with our solar panels, while reducing our use of natural gas. We will know more, of course, as the years go by and you’ll get to watch that unfold when I do the annual entries in this blog!

2016 Nissan LEAF

I LOVE our little LEAF! I’ve nicknamed her “BeeBee”, ’cause she’s so darned cute! She’s also fast, handles well, and uses less electricity than we’d expected. To top it off she’s way more spacious and comfortable than I’d imagined. Our parents can even get in and out of her with ease, which I never thought would be possible! The instant heat and A/C is lovely, especially being able to turn it on with our cell phones before we go out to the car. Heated front seats and steering wheel are wonderful in winter. The trunk is deep and spacious and seats are easy to lay down for carrying longer loads. She is also super quiet, since she doesn’t have an engine.

We never had range issues for in town use and even took the LEAF to Incline Village and Carson City without having to plug her in for a recharge. Our LEAF has a range of 100 miles with a full charge, so it easily accommodates all of our in town travel, and I love not ever going to a gas station! She plugs in like a cell phone through her cute little nose in the garage–how easy is that? One of my secret pleasures with the LEAF is the instant response of the electric motors when you hit the accelerator. I can burn rubber and leave muscle cars in the dust! (Not that I do that often… Really…)

The spreadsheet above gives the first year stats with some projections for the months of January, February and March, since we got the car in April. Averaging out our normal use, we expect to drive the LEAF about 6000 miles per year and use 1.6 megawatts of electricity. If we didn’t have solar panels, it would only cost us $144 per year to power her! That is a savings of around $800 over my old Subaru! (So, it pays to have an EV whether you have solar or not.) But, because we have solar panels, our savings is actually $950! Plus we saved 5700 pounds of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere (286 gallons X 20 lbs/gallon of gas).

We also saved money on repairs and maintenance. I have driven 100,000+ ICE vehicles for most of my life and they have high R&M bills, about $900 per year on average. The LEAF only had one minor repair to tighten front axle bolts for $151, for a savings of $749. This brings the total savings of driving the LEAF for a year to $1,700! (NOTE: This will decrease as the car ages and the R&M bills get higher.) In future years, I will keep a running total of savings so you can see how owning an EV plays out over time. Most EV’s cost about 1/3 of an ICE to maintain due to not having engines and transmissions, and saving the brakes with regenerative braking.

The best part for us has been the pure joy of driving this car and knowing we are powering it with Nevada sunshine and emitting zero carbon and no pollution. We use it most of the time, saving the Highlander for when we need two cars or will be traveling out of the LEAF’s 100-mile range.

2019 Toyota Highlander Hybrid

The Highlander Hybrid is a dream to drive–smooth, comfortable, spacious and luxurious! Really an awesome deal for the price! The hybrid system and continuous variable transmission are engineering miracles in our opinion. The Highlander cruises on the electric motors as much as it can and when it needs the V-6 engine, the engagement is seamless and barely noticeable. It has incredible power for such a large vehicle, yet it is 40% more efficient than the 4-Runner. The continuous variable transmission provides smooth, quick acceleration even when you romp on the accelerator or are pulling Pearl (our teardrop trailer) up a steep hill. Combined with a sophisticated cruise control, you can often set your speed and forget it and the car will adjust itself to accommodate to slower vehicles in front of it, keeping 3 car lengths behind.

It has comfortable captains chairs and front and back and 3 seats in the far back, giving it the capacity to carry 7 passengers. When you fold down all the back seats, you have a cargo area even larger than the 4-Runner’s! The heating and A/C systems keep the cabin comfortable front and back. The front seats can be heated or cooled. The Highlander comes with a tow package installed which easily pulls Pearl for camping trips. You can’t even tell she’s back there! We could tow a trailer 3X her size with the Highlander’s tow capacity of 3500 pounds.

This vehicle is also equipped with a ton of safety features like: lane departure alerts, alarms if a car is coming at you from the side, blind spot alerts, alarms if you get to close to something when parking, and a great backup camera with alarms if something is coming up behind you while you are backing out. Because of all these safety features, it actually costs LESS to insure than the old 4-Runner!

We drove 7676 miles during 2019 and used only 279 gallons of gas, a savings of 200 gallons and $670 over the 4-Runner, and 4000 pounds of carbon emissions (200 gallons X 20 lbs/gallon). Another nice benefit of this is that we only fuel the Highlander once a month instead of twice, and we rarely have to stop for fuel when traveling longer distances. We can go over 400 miles on one tank.

The Highlander is also expected to be cheaper to maintain than the 4-Runner due to the hybrid system and the lower cost of maintaining the two electric motors driving the AWD system. It also uses regenerative braking to store power in its batteries, similar to the LEAF, which reduces wear on the brakes. Hybrids cost about 2/3 as much to maintain as regular ICE vehicles. We will see how this works out over time. This year we saved a lot on R&M because we had been paying about $900/month to maintain the old 4-Runner and the Highlander is covered for 2 years as part of our purchase agreement. However, we decided it was best to use the average R&M over the life of the 4-Runner as a comparison (I’ll adjust that up by 2% per year to factor in inflation over time), so this year the savings added up to $579. It will be interesting to see how it averages out over time…

Our total savings driving the Highlander in 2019 was $1249! And the driving experience was incredible in comparison to the old 4-Runner which had a much stiffer truck suspension, rough gear shifting (especially uphill), scary downhill braking vibrations, a lot more cabin noise, and much less comfortable seating. It was also becoming impossible for our parents to get in and out of its higher seats. We use the Highlander as our travel vehicle for longer road trips and camping adventures with Pearl, for transporting larger items and lumber, and when we need a second car for getting around town. It is an awesome all-around vehicle! The combo of our two vehicles of the future is perfect for us and we are so happy we took the plunge this year and made a long-time dream come true!

December 2019 Data

I never did a blog post for December, as I decided to wait and just do an annual post instead. But here is the December data for those of you who have been following along monthly:

We are excited about 2020 and having a whole year of data to share with you next year, plus more stories about going solar and driving the cars of the future!