According to a Sydney Morning Herald blog post by Alex May, the average $7000 to $12000 cost of a solar photovoltaic power system “is something only a gold-plated Greenie could afford”, and the payback period is more than 24 years. I don’t think anyone is really surprised about the extra cost of installing solar panels. In fact, a decent system costs a good deal more than the “average” cost quoted in the post.
When we went solar a while ago – installing a solar hot water system (which has a much quicker 3-year average payback period) and a solar photovoltaic array – our aim was to do our little bit to reduce our carbon footprint. We weren’t in it for the money, we don’t consider ourselves to be “greenies”, and we weren’t thinking about making sure that “everyone can see” that we have got our “good eco brownie badge”.
If the issue of climate change is as urgent as it seems to be, it’s not something that we can leave to “governments” and expect “governments” to solve. It’s something that requires everyday actions from everybody: actions that cost us something, not just actions that we expect to save us money.