98¢

[Spiky Bugger]

We went solar mid-March and this month's electric bill is 98¢.

Cool, huh?

 

[harrietvane]

Sounds like a socialist plot to me

 

[Spiky Bugger]

Sounds like a socialist plot to me

It IS!

 

[Charris]

I'm JEALOUS!

 

[Clematis]

It cost them half that in postage to mail the bill to you, and MORE than 98 cents if you factor in envelope and labor.

 

[southernlady]

Good going.

 

[Spiky Bugger]

It cost them half that in postage to mail the bill to you, and MORE than 98 cents if you factor in envelope and labor.

And I'll use my bank's bill paying app and spend nothing on stamps or envelopes!

 

[Spiky Bugger]

I'm JEALOUS!

There will be and end-of-year settling up on the difference between what we produce and what we use. This 98¢ is for the "privilege" of being on their grid.

We DID NOT buy the recommended number of panels. We bought about 2/3s of the recommended amount. So we figure we'll still be paying for electricity.

Our "relevant period" started March 15th and, if we were to move away today, we'd owe them about $25 for the about 2.5 months of electricity we have used so far. We shall see how that works out over a year. We DO both breathe better in a 72° house, even over summer, and we have a pretty big pool with a pump that runs for hours and hours. (But because @Munchkin knows her stuff, it's a variable speed pump.)

The system we have cost us about $21,000, but we get a federal tax credit of $6,300... so the net cost was $$14,700. Given that our previous elcctric bills ran anywhere from $120/mo to $420/mo, the 98¢ plus approximately $10/mo so far, is a deal. It should take us about 6 years for the savings to "pay for" the solar...after that, it's cheap with all the costs already offset.

We're such thoughtful, good citizens.

 

[Munchkin]

Color me insanely jealous!!!! I had just saved up enough money to take my pool off the grid when we had that big storm on 3/31. Now I am spending that money on a new roof. Please post what your bills are every month!!! How many MW is your system????? What kind of panels did you get and what connectors?

 

[Spiky Bugger]

Color me insanely jealous!!!! I had just saved up enough money to take my pool off the grid when we had that big storm on 3/31. Now I am spending that money on a new roof. Please post what your bills are every month!!! How many MW is your system????? What kind of panels did you get and what connectors?

We have fourteen 360 watt panels. The brand is SunPower, and the microinverters are built into each panel. Estimated one year production is 7572 KWH...decreasing over time to 7130, KWH, at twenty years, which is (I think) estimated useful life.

Our estimated (predicted?) savings run from $110 to $230 a month...but so far, we are beating that.

The monthly totals would be misleading...as the 98¢ is. The amount we pay this month is 98¢. But there are charges to be on the grid and some of those are part of the electric bill when we actually use more than we produce. This month, we pay 98¢ which is the "leftover" part of the charge for being on the grid. (Last month, we produced more than we used...so we had to pay the full $10+ to be on the grid...because they weren't able to bake those costs into per KWH charges as there were no per KWH charges.)

So there are two numbers we look at each month. The "delivery charges" (to belong to the team) and the "generation charges" (to actually use electricity.) I was reporting the amount we have to pay.

The real numbers were $28.72 in energy charges, but those were "charged" against a credit of $25.45 for energy we had previously produced. Right now, if we moved, we'd have to pay the difference of $3.27....in addition to that 98¢.

But you know...now that I think of it, this is all moot in NV. Here, in beautiful Socialist CA, the utility companies are required by law to "buy" the energy we produce. I think Mr. Buffet put the brakes on that deal in NV. So you would not have any credits for excess production, such as what we had, to offset usage in subsequent months.

I think.

 

[Spiky Bugger]

PS...the issue is "net metering."

We got solar in time for 20 years of guaranteed net metering.

 

[Munchkin]

You are right and there is yet another bill in the NV legislature right now.

Working with the craptastic laws we have right now, My plan would be to take the pool off the grid and put in a 48v adjunct air conditioning system in the office because that's where we spend most of our time. These are things I can do without any cooperation from NVEnergy.

 

[DianaCox]

I hope to be joining you soon. Our PV system has been approved by the HOA and APS (our electric company), so we're just waiting in line for the company to install the system. They are understandably behind, since the deadline is July 1st to get grandfathered into 20 years of net metering in AZ, so there was a last-minute rush. But we're locked in by the APS approval

We went with a somewhat different system, but our costs were about the same. I'm going to see if I can plug my numbers into what you wrote:

The system we have cost us about $20,300 (including dropping a 220 line to where I want to put a hot tub, eventually) $21,000, but we get a federal tax credit of $6080, plus $1000 AZ tax credit $6,300... so the net cost was $13,200 $14,700.

We have fourteen twenty-seven 360 300 watt panels. The brand is SunPower Hanwha Q Cells, and the microinverters are built into each panel there is one SolarEdge inverter with Optimizers. Estimated one year production is 7572 8100 KWH...decreasing over time to 7130, KWH, at twenty years, which is (I think) estimated useful life. At least 97% of nominal power during first year. Thereafter max. 0.6% degradation per year. At least 92% of nominal power up to 10 years. At least 83% of nominal power up to 25 years.

Supposedly, we are going to go from $0 annual electric bill in the beginning (as compared to $2000/year), to a little over $1000/year with the cost of electricity going up as well as demand by 20 years (at which time the estimated annual cost without solar would have been $6000/year).

The 6-6.5 year payoff (at about $2000/year) of course doesn't take into account the lost opportunity costs of investing that $13K somewhere else - but it pays off bigtime (assuming electricity doesn't somehow get much less expensive over the next 20 years instead of going up at 5.5%/year as the PV company estimates) over the next 15years (increasing from ~$3000/year to $7000/year - (average $5000 x 15 years = $75,000; plus the $~15,000 we didn't pay in electricity for the first 6 years).

We're going to be into late July- early August before we are installed, so possibly September before we see the savings. But July-September are the hottest months, supposedly (and it was 108 today).

 

[JackieOnLine]

congratulations!

I was wondering, SB, how you were able to start all these threads without me getting a notification and it turns out I wasn't "following" you! so I fixed that.

 

[DianaCox]

Update - the installer called yesterday and they have an opening for installation on Monday! Yay!

He also answered a question I had about whether the solar panels installed over the roof of the master bedroom would maybe help with the fact that the bedroom is warmer than the rest of the house (it's on the southwest corner of the house) by blocking the sun from directly heating the roof, or make it HOTTER due to generation of electricity. I was proposing the former; Charles thought perhaps the latter. Turns out I'm right - it might help. The heat would all be generated at the inverter, not on the panels themselves.

I'm excited to join the green revolution (and to not feel as guilty cranking the A/C up a little).