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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

#231

Post by kibwen »

pokeymcsnatch wrote: post #203
lostlogin wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh? My crappy roof was installed in 1945 and has some life left. What sort of roofing lasts 25 years?

Afaik shingle roofs (common in US) need replacing every 10-20 years.

I actually wonder how solar panels reduce the rate at which a roof deteriorates. The panels themselves should bear the brunt of the light and rain that the shingles below them would otherwise endure, but on the other hand the panels don't cover the entire roof, so maybe at best you'd need to replace less of the roof but on the same schedule.

Re: Solar panels reduced my electric bill in 2022

#232

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

mrguyorama wrote: post #196
SketchySeaBeast wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is this for 100% detachment from the grid? Otherwise you need to add cutoffs so you don't kill a lineman, right? Is that a DIY thing?

Different states have different rules but in some states you can just put a new breaker in your box that connects the solar output to the rest of your house and a mechanical interlock (literally a stamped piece of metal) that prevents both the main breaker and solar breaker being closed at the same time.

Ah, OK, so that would work for the "simple" systems, but not the ones where you can feed power back into the grid and get a credit.

Re: Solar panels reduced my electric bill in 2022

#233

Post by scld »

praxulus wrote: post #144
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…

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 the northeast at least there are separate lines for supply and distribution. If your supply goes negative, you still pay the distribution fee....and if you supplied more than the distribution cost....why wouldn't you receive money? Unless the energy company is for some reason not charging properly for distribution, seems everything is already baked in.

Re: Solar panels reduced my electric bill in 2022

#234

Post by eppp »

amluto wrote: post #149
eppp wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because net metering is forcing the utility to purchase power at the retail rate. It doesn't make any sense. It isn't a profit margin issue. There is a massive infrastructure and expense to deliver wholesale power to an individual customer and it has to be recouped. Either you sell back your power at some percent of wholesale or solar installs need to get a corresponding increased delivery fee.

This is all rather bizarre. If PG&E charges 30 cents/kWh for a marginal kWh delivered, then either something is quite wrong with the pricing model or it really does cost some respectable fraction of 30 cents/kWh to get a marginal kWh through their system into their distribution network where the customer is. If it's the latter, then reduction of 1 kWh delivered should save them the same amount of money. I think the r…

The issue is that you have to size the hardware for a multiple of the power draw you expect and the cost doesn't go down because people use less temporarily. You also have to do all the vegetation management and billing and it and billing regardless of the amount of kWh that are used even if a solar install is negative. They might draw today and it has to be available.

Re: Solar panels reduced my electric bill in 2022

#235

Post by deadcore »

I've just installed solar & batteries (not 2 weeks ago we turned them on!). Be interesting to see how things will unfold and I love reading stories on how people have got on with theirs. It was roughly ~£12,900 installed (in the UK) and we pay 32.596p/kWh & 42.290p/day standing charge...

Will either pay off well or be an expensive lesson

Re: Solar panels reduced my electric bill in 2022

#236

Post by opo »

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…

Consumer rooftop solar is the most expensive way ever thought of to provide electrical power. Money is fungible. A dollar tied up in building a one-off consumer solar installation is exactly a dollar unavailable for building out utility grade solar which can be done at a fraction of the cost.

With net metering, wealthier home owners are essentially paid the retail rate for the electricity they sell to the grid which causes higher electricity bills for those who can't afford to put panels on their roof - sort of a reverse Robinhood scheme. I recall reading that with net-metering, non-solar households in CA pay an estimated extra $115 to $245 per year to cover the subsidies given to their wealthier neighbors.

Re: Solar panels reduced my electric bill in 2022

#237

Post by foobarian »

Someone1234 wrote: post #224
foobarian wrote: post #170

I have a pretty ideally angled roof near Boston and was considering a solar setup. However as far as I can tell we won't get paid for excess generation in any given month, so since we don't really use much electricity it seems this is not a good investment. Are there any common updates possible to take advantage of the excess power? Before ETH switched to POS I thought about mining crypto... otherwise we could switch…

> otherwise we could switch to electric heat but that is a huge outlay. You can walk into any major retailer, buy a space heater, and plug it into any outlet in your home. Keep in mind that your gas furnace is turned on/off using a thermostat and temperature setting, so if you reduce the set-point e.g. 1 degree, and then either locate the coldest parts of your home or areas you want to prioritize (e.g. livingrooms/be…

Sure but I don't want a bunch of random space heaters around the house. Regardless of whether they are safe or not it's a waste of space if there is an existing central heating system.

Re: Solar panels reduced my electric bill in 2022

#238

Post by AtlasBarfed »

eppp wrote: post #128
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…

Because net metering is forcing the utility to purchase power at the retail rate. It doesn't make any sense. It isn't a profit margin issue. There is a massive infrastructure and expense to deliver wholesale power to an individual customer and it has to be recouped. Either you sell back your power at some percent of wholesale or solar installs need to get a corresponding increased delivery fee.

We need something that will incent home solar + storage because:

1) it increases resilience in disaster scenarios and a lot of high usage scenarios. I especially think back to Puerto Rico getting hit by the Hurricane, or the Texas icestorms or things like that. Having a lot of homes semi-independent of the grid would help people mitigate impacts, because you can rely on neighbors for certain things while the grid is down.

2) BEVs are going to introduce a huge additional burden on the grid. But if we couple it with a lot of home solar installations, it will reduce the impact to the grid and the grid can focus on more industrial tasks like highway supercharging for semis and those big challenges.

3) aside from the solar panels, home solar means a distributed storage for the grid too.

Net metering is flawed, but there's the baby with the bathwater argument. Let's introduce better incentives before chucking the flawed ones that are working, and I don't see that happening.

And it's hard to price the incentives. Home solar panels are going to change a lot with forthcoming perovskites, and home storage is going to drastically change with production Sodium Ion, high density LFP/LFMP in the next few years, and Sulfur beyond that.

What I think is ridiculous is the pricing of home solar+storage versus what the grid buyers get. If home solar programs could have their panels bulk-purchased along with grid solar purchases and then the grid providers have to get them installed to homes, it would swap the grid providers from opposing home solar to being incented to finding people to allow the installation.

Re: Solar panels reduced my electric bill in 2022

#239

Post by AtlasBarfed »

eppp wrote: post #190
oso2k wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No (potential) customer is required to make any company profitable.

And should a company be forced to subsidize a customer?

When the company is a utility with a built in monopoly, with legal access to shared resources like land for transmission cables, and is the easiest path to executing policy as important as decarbonization?

Yes, if it helps the implementation of the policy.

Our entire power system lacks proper carbon taxation. So I won't cry over minor things like power companies making a bit less money when the effect is a major avenue to mitigating carbon emissions.

Arguably incenting the grid to switch over from coal/natural gas to wind/solar/storage is more important, but lets try multiple approaches and not stop what is working.

Re: Solar panels reduced my electric bill in 2022

#240

Post by phh »

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…

I would say most people can't afford 25k$ investment cost for something relying on governmental decision that can change on a whim
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