[ChuckMcM]

Not that anyone would do it this way, but that calculator got me thinking. Often I have heard home affordability expressed as dollars per month vs dollars financed. So for example this worked example of a $200,000 mortgage [1] has a $1553.45 monthly payment, so for each $1 per month you got $124.24 of house. Does that make sense?

If so, now consider that your $200/month electricity bill is the equivalent of $124.24 x $200 or $24,847 worth of "house".

Our actual bills were $250 - $300/month pre-panels and effectively about $15/month post panels. In terms of money returned by 7 years we had paid less in electricity than we had paid for the panels. But that discounts what $20,000 would have been worth if we had invested it (that is the 'do nothing' alternative since you aren't really considering putting that money under a mattress :-) And of course we also made our house more efficient which we would have gotten that pay back either way.

The only downside to our system has been trying to explain to people why it doesn't provide power when the power is off.

[1] http://hfa3741.hubpages.com/hub/How-Much-Does-a-200-000-Hous...