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I recently purchased a Honda CR-Z over Trade Me via a private sale. This machine is amazing – it goes 887 kilometres off a $67 tank of gas, adding a full 220 kilometres to my past, still-relatively-fuel-efficient, vehicle.
The machine is in near perfect condition and looks set to last many years. It saves me nearly $20 a week in gas and with petrol inflation factored in, looks set to generate  return on investment of over 13%, paying for itself over 7.5 years. Best of all, it cost me only $8,500 when the market value is over $11,500.

How did I get such a machine at a 26% discount? By knowing the market, watching the models I was interested in, negotiating hard (but fair). Essentially, by being the only one looking.

Every week, new hybrid models are coming up online, often trading at a discount to what they’re worth. After a model has been on the market for a few weeks it’s ready to move, often at a discount price. Keeping an eye on the market is often a worthwhile thing.

Solar power has changed our household. It was not necessarily the wisest investment, and had I known all that there was to know before I installed it I probably wouldn’t have installed it. But even so, it has completely changed how we understand and use power within our own household, and in addition to the power the panels have provided, it has led us to reconsider our use on many appliances to make more efficient use of the power supplied.

Solar power does not generate a consistent amount of power every day. The worst days will be when it is rainy or overcast the whole day through. On these days, even our 1.5 kWh system might only generate 1 kWh of total power – barely saving us 25 cents.

On brighter days, it may generate ten times this amount. The problem is, during the brightest of days, we have very little need of daytime energy.
We are with an energy provider who offers us a very good rate overall, but who does not allow us to sell surplus energy back to the grid. This means we must find creative ways to use the surplus. One of the best ways I’ve found of using up surplus solar energy is to make evening meals using a slow cooker that you leave running during the daytime. This can easily consume 1.8 kWh of your surplus, and take that energy off the grid for the requirement of cooking an evening meal – a process that is far more efficient, as evening meals regularly use 2 to 3 kWh to cook during peak hours when solar supply is not available.

So to make better use of solar, you need to make sure that you have not only the supply, but also the household demand. Planning your solar use effectively is like a game that can literally save your household thousands of dollars over a few years.

I would not recommend solar for just any household. One of the first things you must do is assess your own household consumption. There is no real automated way to do this, so it requires a lot of planning and recording. You cannot glean these sorts of insights from your energy bill.

That means standing at your smart meter and recording power consumption levels on the hour, day after day if need be, and across multiple seasons if you want a really accurate forecast. Getting a real time picture of how much energy you use during daylight hours will improve the viability of your solar installation. Half of solar is in the planning.

This is an important step. One of the worst mistakes you can make environmentally is to buy more than you need.

Were an app or piece of software available that could parse your power consumption data and do the maths for you, this would greatly improve the efficiency of solar power installations worldwide. An upfront understanding of how and when your household actually uses power is critical to planning.

Solar is something that can be optimised through planning.

One thing I just keep going back to is the optimal usage of solar panels, once installed, and the question this raises about how far one should tailor one’s energy consumption to suit the renewable energy that is now available.

The usage of solar panels is almost a question or architecture and urban planning. Knowing that one will receive a certain amount of (somewhat) predictable renewable energy supply means that one can plan obsessively over how to get a bit more squeeze out of the lemon, so to speak.

Solar panels are a very poorly understood asset. Their value is all too often overstated, and yet there are many opportunities for their deployment where they would deliver exceptional returns.

The question for me is, do I allow solar panels to dictate my usage of energy, particularly in summer when we have an abundance of it, or do I instead prioritise the (sometimes whimsical) use of energy in my household, and just use the panels as a mop to catch the consumption?

A better understanding of solar panels could potentially save me thousands. Yet I struggle sometimes in summer to come up with ways to use the power. 

I also struggle to adjust my habits quite as far as I should. I know I could make better use of my slow cooker, for instance. But with spare time across the holidays it’s actually more fun to chuck something on the frying pan.
This year I’m going to learn at least 15 new recipes. At least 10 of them will be slow cooker recipes. I could perhaps go so far as to invite a few more people over for a feed.

I also want to concentrate a bit more on legumes as a source of nutrition, and find ways to make better use of the stock I make.
It’s a fun little exercise, and cents are on the line.

Following on from my decision to invest an additional $2 per week into Kiwisaver, I went through a process of assessing my long term goals, reviewing the available funds and their investment philosophies, and arriving at the decision that the best long term investment option that met my investment criteria was the Simplicity Kiwisaver Balanced Fund.

Continue reading “Generate Kiwisaver versus Simplicity Kiwisaver”