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OLD ROCK STAR WILL GIVE YOU $8000 30-Apr-2009 At 8:44:20 PM lacto

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To me if everyone took the opportunity to connect a pv system up (and this particular offer gives you a 1kw system for $500 ) the 1400 + kw produced will make every household more aware of the energy they consume as they will try to maximises their return and maybe even install more panels to tryand create a minium power bill. Sure it doesnt stop consumption but at least helps bring about an awareness .
We run a dairy farm and consume massive amounts of power 15 to 20,000 kwh per quarter . We try and firstly minimise our power use and secondly minimise our costs by using as much off peak power rather than peak power .
Much of our use is in heating water and cooling milk , we need 1000 to 1200 litres of water at 90 to 95 degrees and must cool upto 9000 litres of milk from 38 degrees to 4 .
Until lately we used water fed in at 9 to 25 depending on the season but now use evacuated solar tubes to preheat this water and have had it up to 70 . today the water in was 13 and water out 34 which is 21 difference which saved 28kwh for an input of 8 hrs for the circulating pump 75 watts . over a whole year probable 10,000 kwh saved @ 7.5 cents for off peak and 19 peak saving about $1200 a year .The 90 tubes and tank all up cost $8000.
We installed a 5kw pv system which in a little over 3 months has produced 2800 kwh of which 630 kwh was fed back into the grid so saved 2170 which would have cost $340 and got a credit of 23.5 cents for 680 kwh approx $160 or $500 all up probably $1800 pa so all up our solar is "saving 20000kwh per year or $3000 for an investment of $45000 which isn't exactly a flash return at 6.6% but a hell of a lot better than in ABC CHILD CARE , ALLCO, TIMBER CORP etc and believe me power prices will not fall in the future . Also our power comes either from Latrobe valley or Snowy,Kiewa over very large distances with probably 5 to 10 % transmission losses we consume what we produce and what we feed back to the grid probably is consumed with 2 km of here. Rather than wait for some ficticious super large solar system we have actually done something and forget about the rec etc you will get YOUR money back within 2 years and with judicous use maybe one or less .