What is the environmental and financial win-win of investing in solar power?

Over the last decade, people have become more conscious about the environmental benefits of installing solar power systems. Nowadays, it's a 50/50 split where people consider the environment when making a conscious decision on what they want. Saving money is also a great motivator, especially for retirees who have invested money. By selling power back to the grid, they can get up to 20 cents per kilowatt, which can sustain them for a longer period.

However, whether it's best to get a higher discount on the power bought or a higher feed-in rate for power sold back to the grid depends on the energy retailer. The feed-in tariff is typically around 11-12 cents. It is, therefore, essential to balance the options to make the most of the solar power system.

Ten years ago, if we had've been talking about environmental benefits of putting solar in, it wasn't really something that was discussed. And nowadays I'm finding it's probably a 50/50 split where people are saying, I want to do the right thing by the environment, I'm conscious of the effects of coal-fired generators and that side of things. So people, they make a conscious decision based obviously on what they want, but the environment does come into the play now.

Yeah, money's a great motivator, and if you can save a lot of money, especially for some of the people that are retired, they've got money invested, and if they can put a solar power system in that's going to save them money, then their investments are going to sustain them for a lot longer as well. So they'll look at selling power back to the grid and depending on who your energy retailer is, you can get 8, 10, 11, 12 cents a kilowatt, you can get up to 20. So it really comes down to just trying to balance whether it's worthwhile getting a higher discount on the power that you're buying, or whether you get a higher feed-in rate for the power you're selling back to the grid. The feed-in tariff, in a lot of cases, if you're getting that 12 cent mark, 11, 12 cents, that seems to be about where the market is.