Over the past few months, my parents have been considering installing solar panels on our roof. We live in a fairly large house (around 34 squares) with 6 people (2 adults, 2 young adults, 2 early teens) and also 6 animals (3 dogs, 3 cats). Being the environmental nut that I am, my parents asked me to assist with researching solar panel installation companies, the costs involved and the current government rebates available. So I did some research. Based mainly on the two websites http://www.energymatters.com.au/ and http://www.solaronline.com.au/ I have discovered that solar panels are an extremely non-viable option for my family.

It appears that average figures for solar panel installations work out to be $2500 - $3000 per kWh per day, ie. for every $3000 one spends on a solar system, they gain 1 kWh per day. Now, after discovering this, I obviously investigated my families average daily electricity consumption. We use around 43 kWh per day. By this, my parents would be looking at spending around $100,000 (pre government rebates/solar credits) in order to produce the electricity we use, let alone produce any surplus to pump back into the grid and make money from (which is what most sales pitches work off).

After making this highly depressing discovery, I found myself asking "What's wrong with our household? Why is this such an impossible, expensive option?" So I decided to look at the average household energy consumption for Melburnians. Unfortunately, I was unable to find any current or almost current statistics, but I did find some from 2003. These stated that "In 2003 the average Melburnian consumed 2161 kWh of electricity at home" and that "The average metropolitan household consumed 6265 kWh of electricity" (http://www.aius.org.au/indicators/sectiontype.cfm?ThemeID=4&SectionTypeID=1). Now, as I live in a household of 6 people, I decided that the second figure was pretty irrelevant for my situation. So, based on the per person average I worked out the following:
(2161*6)/365=35.5

By this, my household is using 8 kWh, or around 22.5% per day more than the average...and we don't even have a dryer anymore! It makes me worry.

Plus, after reading a thread that showed a bunch of people who consumed a fair bit below the average (http://forums.overclockers.com.au/showthread.php?t=756975), I can not help thinking that maybe the state mean would be a fair bit lower if it were not for outliers like my household.

It makes me worry even more...