This time last year, Peter and Kathi Schlesinger received a winter energy bill of more than $1000.
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The Flynn couple had thought about installing solar panels and that four-figure sum was the final push they needed. In May the couple had 21 solar panels installed on the roof of their 40-year-old home, which they had already had renovated with retrofit double glazing, roller shutters and halogen light globes to make it more energy efficient.
Mr Schlesinger, a retired public servant, has been tracking the amount of energy the panels have produced. When this quarter's electricity bill arrives, he is hoping for a significant reduction on what they paid last winter.
"This time last year the bill was just over $1000 and the usage was just over 6000 kilowatt hours," he said.
"This time round I'd be surprised if we'd even got to half of that."
Mrs Schlesinger, a health practitioner, said the decision to install a photovoltaic system was one they had been happy with.
"Eventually we hope to see a reduction in our power bill and we feel like we've done our bit for the planet," she said. "It's only small but we feel like we're doing a little bit."
She said she was not surprised so many Canberrans were switching to solar power, but she did not expect Canberra's northern suburbs would be the ones leading the charge.
"Obviously there's reasonable costs involved and I wouldn't have thought that Flynn would have been the demographic," she said. "But everybody has got the same issues as us in terms of wanting to reduce their power bills."