Time to Update to Greener Appliances

Now that we are up and running on the Solar Energy plain, we needed to look at the appliances in our home. Could we be more energy conversing in some areas. Most Refrigerators use a lot of the energy provided to the home. If you have a dishwasher it too can suck up the watts. Maryland has a program running that will pay you for replacing your appliances.

Refrigerators are the most costly appliance in a home. Therefore it was the first thing we looked at. Decided to update to a more efficient one. The one we will get rid of is about 15 years old, not an energy saver at all. It takes 700 to 1600kilowatts-hours to operate it. Therefore by replacing it with an energy star one, we will save half the kilowatts hours saving Money.
What to do with old one? Did you know that 120 pounds of recyclable steel is in the average ten years or older refrigerator? By recycling our refrigerator, we save enough energy to run our new energy star refrigerator for 8 months. Our Power company will give us fifty dollar for the old one and take it off our hands to be recycled.

Next the dishwasher. We have a good one, however because our family is small, we tend to run at half full. Not a wise move, yes I could wash by hand but with the flu and viruses we feel we need the sanitizing of the dishwasher. Also most dishwasher heat their own water saving on the water heaters energy consumption. One more thing, Believe it or not it takes less water to use the dishwasher than to wash by hand. So a dishwasher is a good choice. We decided to get a two drawer one it will save energy and water.

This Going Green is costing us in money however in the long run it will make us better stewards of it. You see when retirement comes we hope to be self sufficient enough to be able to keep our home and pay our daily expenses. I know not many of you younger guys think about that. You should, time goes by so fast and before you know it you will be wondering how you will ever make it without working on Retirement income. We do not want to live on credit cards, like some seniors are today. They never thought the cost would be so high that their retirement income would not be sufficient to live on.

So here we are just starting to figure out how to save the environment as well as ourselves. there are many Incentive's to assist in the paying for some of these upgrades and energy solutions. I will write about those later. For now we are taking every opportunity out there.

Yearly Equivalent of One Parked Car

There is a house in our neighborhood that has Solar Panels. I did not think it was attractive at all. Is Going Green suppose to be attractive? As a women I like things to look a certain way. Inviting , neat and traditional. Solar panels on the sides and top of ones home does not meet my specs. Here is where I have to lay aside my specs.
Hubby says "I have two people coming over to give estimates for solar". It seems that our house is in a good location. All the panels would be located on the roof. Since we are higher then the other houses , they would almost be invisible. One could only see them in a car at the top of the hill. Even then it would not stand out so they say. We can choose our color and number of panels. Now comes the cost part.
For a 230 rated power , which is 14 panels the cost is about 20,000 dollars. The state has a grant program which they give back about 3500.00. Our county has a tax credit program which will give us 5000.00 credit. The Federal government has a tax grant which will pay us back 30% of the original system cost. All that means is our bottom line cost will be about 5500.00 dollars. Now there is a Renewable Energy Credit known as REC. It is like owning a piece a stock in the solar energy market. In today's market it is about 300.00 dollars per 1 REC. Our system has 3 REC's. Each year we can sell them. Some companies will buy them up front However they can only buy so many months, you always own the stocks. If we were to sell our REC for 120Months that would lower the net cost to about 2500.00 dollars. Whew, that was a lot to soak in! I still want to know how much we would save in the long run. With repairs and maintenance would the cost be less? What about the Green issue, does that out weigh the cost saved?
Research states that pounds of Carbon Dioxide Emissions reduced with our Solar Electric System in a 25 year period is 330,050. Now the equivalent number of miles driven in a typical American car would be 365,792 Miles or 14,631 miles per year. That is like Parking one car for the 25 years. As you can see the Green effect is great.
My questions for you, Do you have Solar in your home? If you don't would you consider it?