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Solar panels reduced my electric bill in 2022

mattbruenig.com

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Re: Solar panels reduced my electric bill in 2022

#211

Post by Xt-6 »

cheald wrote: post #126
Dwolb wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you experienced any grid power outages where your solar panels saved your day?

Solar won't keep you online through a power outage. The inverter is required by law to cut power from solar panels when there is not power from the grid, so as to avoid feeding electricity back into the grid lines (which technicians may be working on!) - this is known as anti-islanding protection. If you want to be online through a grid outage you need a battery array.

It is possible to do this without battery, but you need some special inverters, like the Enphase IQ8.

Re: Solar panels reduced my electric bill in 2022

#212

Post by jasonpbecker »

AndrewGaspar wrote: post #168

Can somebody explain where the return on investment comes from in residential solar? It just strikes me that if there was easy money to be had on solar installations, we'd just get tons of utility scale solar installs (which would likely by more capital efficient) and my utility bill would over time converge on the expected total utility bill for a home with residential solar. Is it just because we're in that transit…

We are getting tons of utility scale solar:

> Utility-scale solar power generation in the U.S. is surging. This year, almost half the 46.1 gigawatts (GW) of generating capacity added to the grid will be solar, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, and solar has contributed more than 30% of all new capacity in five of the last six years.

https://news.sap.com/2022/11/the-take-utility-scale-solar-su...

Residential solar has no complexity for siting, transmission infrastructure, takes different skills to install, and let's relatively wealthy people move fast.

Re: Solar panels reduced my electric bill in 2022

#213

Post by ketralnis »

mertd wrote: post #173
mdorazio wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Over the last 8 quarters their average profit margin is a whopping 3.25%. If you think that’s just too high I’m not sure what to tell you. An alternate way to look at the CA rule change is that CA needs more installed storage to shore up the shitty grid, and incentivizing people to install solar alone via net metering isn’t a great idea anymore. Remember that peak power demand is right around and just after sunset.

Does that include all deferred maintenance they had to do after the massive wildfires?

And payouts for the various ongoing wrongful death law lawsuits

Re: Solar panels reduced my electric bill in 2022

#214

Post by eppp »

mrguyorama wrote: post #179
praxulus wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Net metering just doesn't make sense though. Everyone who wants to rely on the grid for power availability ought to pay for grid upkeep costs. Net metering would make sense if it came on top of a baseline "connectivity fee" that covered grid maintenance, but that's not the current policy, would likely be politically infeasible, and would hurt rooftop solar customers financially anyway. Subsidizing solar is a perfectl…

In maine, CMP charges $11 a month for a "connection" to the grid and your first monthly 50kwh. Is that not the case in california or other net metering markets?

$11 doesn't even come close to touching the distribution cost. It is just a way of showing you a slightly lower kWh rate if it is that low.

Re: Solar panels reduced my electric bill in 2022

#215

Post by CTmystery »

irrational wrote: post #88

We had solar panels on our last house. Even in the cloudy PNW, we generated enough electricity to cover 100% of our electrical needs. And, the monthly cost of the loan payment was about $30 less than our previous cheapest monthly electrical payment. Unfortunately our new house doesn't have a roof configuration that allows for solar panels. I wonder if new home architecture and alignment will change to make solar pane…

> Even in the cloudy PNW, we generated enough electricity to cover 100% of our electrical needs.

I'm curious, was your heat and stove electric or natural gas (or other)?

Re: Solar panels reduced my electric bill in 2022

#216

Post by hippich »

Any1 built their own battery-arrays? I am interested in solar in part to avoid blackouts. But for that I will need batteries. And my house being 100% electric, tesla's powerwall quickly becomes expensive. On a first glance, using lead-acid batteries appears to be straightforward, but I wonder what edge-cases and gotchas others experienced with it. How much time is needed to maintain it.

So far 10kW gas generator was able to power most of the house's essentials before resistive heater kicks in in HVAC system (two heatpump units, each has a 7.5kw resistive heater as a backup when outside temperature drops too much.) But I would feel better if I did not have to rely on availability of propane/gas and clean roads during periods like 2021 blizzard in Texas.

Re: Solar panels reduced my electric bill in 2022

#217

Post by ihaveajob »

mrguyorama wrote: post #179
praxulus wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Net metering just doesn't make sense though. Everyone who wants to rely on the grid for power availability ought to pay for grid upkeep costs. Net metering would make sense if it came on top of a baseline "connectivity fee" that covered grid maintenance, but that's not the current policy, would likely be politically infeasible, and would hurt rooftop solar customers financially anyway. Subsidizing solar is a perfectl…

In maine, CMP charges $11 a month for a "connection" to the grid and your first monthly 50kwh. Is that not the case in california or other net metering markets?

Yes it is, there's a connection fee of approximately $10/month for that same reason. Net metering is a totally unrelated topic. What's being argued about is the rate. Until now, rooftop solar customers get a retail-level payback for excess production sent to the grid. Under the proposal, this payback would be at the wholesale price, which is significantly lower.

Re: Solar panels reduced my electric bill in 2022

#218

Post by hbarka »

mdorazio wrote: post #145
hbarka wrote: post #109

Assuming you are grid-tied, the reduction of electric bills is predicated on net metering, where the utility company gives you (ideally) 1-for-1 credit for the electricity you produce. In California, this was called NEM 1.0 and NEM 2.0. Every few years the California utilities lobby the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) to chip away at the NEM program. This year the PUC voted unanimously to cut net energy metering an…

Over the last 8 quarters their average profit margin is a whopping 3.25%. If you think that’s just too high I’m not sure what to tell you. An alternate way to look at the CA rule change is that CA needs more installed storage to shore up the shitty grid, and incentivizing people to install solar alone via net metering isn’t a great idea anymore. Remember that peak power demand is right around and just after sunset.

Companies can keep profit margin flat by increasing operating expenses such as salary. For PG&E it looks immoral.

https://www.ewg.org/news-insights/news-release/2022/10/ratep...

Re: Solar panels reduced my electric bill in 2022

#219

Post by birken »

hinkley wrote: post #184
secabeen wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What we need is a fundamental change in electricity billing. The value in a grid connection is in its reliability, availability and demand response (you can demand anything from 1 Amp to 200 Amps at any time, with no notice). The current usage-only billing model is broken. What we should do is pay a large flat monthly fee for the grid connection, then a lower rate for generation/usage, rather than bundling the delive…

I think you’re missing a different piece of the puzzle here which is that if I pay $10 for the first gallon of water and next to nothing for the next 500, I have an incentive to use more water and not less. I’ve paid for it anyway. When you’re trying to solve public policy problems especially where conservation is concerned the notion of math gets complicated very quickly.

Additionally, the worst strains on the grid are really measured by the peak loads, so if you change billing a way that makes the peak energy less expensive, and therefore disincentivize people to (a) reduce usage at peak times or (b) install solar panels/batteries to mitigate their peak usage, then it actually might make the grid more unreliable.

Water is different in that we really only have usage concerns about water, AFAIK there is never any issue with the water pressure drops at peak times (perhaps thanks to water towers). With electricity the concerns are mostly about the peak usage, and not so much the overall usage.

Re: Solar panels reduced my electric bill in 2022

#220

Post by theptip »

AndrewGaspar wrote: post #168

Can somebody explain where the return on investment comes from in residential solar? It just strikes me that if there was easy money to be had on solar installations, we'd just get tons of utility scale solar installs (which would likely by more capital efficient) and my utility bill would over time converge on the expected total utility bill for a home with residential solar. Is it just because we're in that transit…

> we'd just get tons of utility scale solar installs

This is happening, in a big way: https://emp.lbl.gov/utility-scale-solar/

The main limitation AIUI is grid interconnections, i.e. there are a lot of projects in the backlog that can't be built until the utility approves and prepares for it.

https://emp.lbl.gov/queues

> The lists of projects in this process are known as “interconnection queues”. The amount of new electric capacity in these queues is growing dramatically, with over 1,400 gigawatts (GW) of total generation and storage capacity now seeking connection to the grid (over 90% of which is for zero-carbon resources like solar, wind, and battery storage).

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