Who's gone Solar

[bojangle]

UPDATE - One year after going live.

Our first NEM year-end true-up bill came in at the end of July. We signed our contract in April 2022 and went live in mid-July last year.

We generated 87 excess kWh of electricity, netting us a whopping bill credit of $7.16 at a rate of around $0.08/kWh.

When we initially ran our internal rate of return calcs we were using the then current rate of $0.32/kWh and assumed inflation to be 7.75%. This resulted in a simple payback of 5 years and an IRR of around 18%.

As it turns out, the rate hikes were bigger than that in the last two years, and the average rate is now $0.50/kWh. Our usage levels were about spot on accurate, so the IRR is now almost 25%, and simple payback comes out to 4.1 years.

This is shaping up to be a good investment, especially given the future rate hikes that are likely.

That's awesome!

But why did the excess pay so low? Is that part of NEM2? I thought excess should be credited at around $0.30/kwh. Or are they allowed to credit at only $0.08/kwh for anything in excess of actual usage at the end of the year?

I assume a credit means you had no true up bill to pay? Did you have an ongoing monthly charge ($10 or something?) for electricity service in addition to true up?

 

[bojangle]

Tell me about it. It's been over 10 weeks now since my install was approved by the city inspector. I know at least part of the fault lies with Tesla. They took their sweet time (an entire week) after approval to open the online portal to pay for the system, and then another whole week before officially acknowledging the payment online and telling me they were sending the paperwork over to PG&E. Then so knows how long it took them to actually send the paperwork over.

I waited a while. The first time I inquired with Tesla about the wait, they said something to the effect that they missed a signature, or something, and that PG&E had returned the application to them, but it had been sent back to PG&E corrected. I contacted Tesla again last week and they told me they'd looking into my case and reach out to PG&E. So far I've heard nothing back yet. I'm getting a little frustrated with this all by now. It shouldn't take this long. They've already exceeded the out limits of their already long estimated window of 8 weeks, so they need to prioritize this shit by now and clear me. I feel like just turning the system on without approval at this point.

 

[ThinkFast]

That's awesome!

But why did the excess pay so low? Is that part of NEM2? I thought excess should be credited at around $0.30/kwh. Or are they allowed to credit at only $0.08/kwh for anything in excess of actual usage at the end of the year?

I assume a credit means you had no true up bill to pay? Did you have an ongoing monthly charge ($10 or something?) for electricity service in addition to true up?

Yes - no true-up bill. Re the paltry credit amount, t’s well-known that the kWh credit value for over production is a fraction of the normal rate they charge. I didn’t try to oversized our system anyways, so I don’t care about that. It probably would’ve been a bit higher if we hadn’t had such a gloomy June.

We did pay the monthly $11ish interconnect grid access fee called for in the NEM2 agreement, so that was about $140 or something for the year. Still, with $1600 in electricity usage erased, that’s small change. And I think it’s a legitimate fee.

I guess if we wanted to avoid it we could spend $10-20k on a full battery system that would not just be for backup, but for powering our home at night every single day. That’s a big investment to just be able to thumb your nose at “the man”, so in my view not worth it.

 

[Alan_Hepburn]

The rate that you get paid for your excess production is a fraction of what you are charged for usage. If I recall, when we started 7 years ago they said that the average to buy the power was something like $0.16 per kWH while the average to sell the excess was around $0.04 per kWH.

Some time ago we were switched from buying power from PG&E to buying it from San Jose Clean Energy. That resulted in a change to our True-up results: with PG&E we always got a small credit on our bill at true-up time; with SJCE the past 2 years we have received a check in the mail: the first one was for $97 and this year it was $170. It helps that we spend a lot of time in our RV so the house is generating power but only using a fraction of our "normal" use!

 

[GAJ]

Yea, at around $3/day estimated "gain" in terms of power sold to the utility per day in the few very sunny August days this thing has been on line I expect at year end to all pretty much zero out which is fine by me.

I didn't look at this as a money maker but a money saver.

Time will tell I guess.

Bo, that situation you are in sucks big time as this is the time to make hay for the much shorter winter sun peak hours.

The fact that PGE turned us on a day after getting the paperwork tells me Tesla is fucking up big time.

 

[tgrrdr]

Tell me about it. It's been over 10 weeks now since my install was approved by the city inspector.

I feel like just turning the system on without approval at this point.

My system was installed on October 14th and I didn't get permission to operate until December 2nd (the installer didn't contact PGE after city inspection until I asked them what was going on). The installer turned it on before they left and there were no repercussions. I didn't get credit for the power I sent to the grid (green bars) but anything I used during the day was basically free and I only got charged for the power I imported when my system wasn't producing power (short blue bars after 10/14).

My bill dropped from $245 in September to $98 in October.




I still don't know how to decipher my electric bills but I think my total charge for electricity in December (after PTO) was negative $28.81 and I got a NEM credit of $10.74. I'm not sure what happens with the "non-bypassable charges" of $7.15, I don't see where that shows up in my bill but I assume I paid it somewhere.

 

[ThinkFast]

Here’s what the future of new-home development looks like, at least in places where there’s enough sunshine to make a community micro-grid economically viable.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/07/...4hfN_Xgsvf9AR6waNRhTdTSrjKev1w&smid=url-share

 

[mercurial]

A huge YES to this model, and it's coming to California as PG&E/PUC continue to muck with our rate models to try to screw homeowners over.

This devolves control to the appropriate level, where homeowners get to pay for the appropriate amount of infrastructure that balances reliability and cost. It doesn't have to just be new developments, more local grids can also exist at closer to the municipality level. At that level you begin to get really interesting options, like using electric cars as distributed battery infra that charge during the day and draw down during the evening. Every municipality will need a small nat gas plant to get through the winter months, but it can be undersized compared to today, since the municipal battery infra will help match the production curve with the demand curve, and improving panel efficiency means that we can largely solve winter underproduction through massive over-provisioning of solar capacity. Anyway, so many interesting possibilities that don't involve PG&E being around.

 

[Bubba_s]

You guys read the part where they "Give up" control of their thermostats and water heaters? Uh, that doesn't seem good to me.

 

[GAJ]

Sunpower just added a cool new feature to their monitoring app.

You can now look at how much each individual panel is producing live and historically.

Useful to check that all panels are indeed functioning and what part of the house produces most.

 

[mercurial]

You guys read the part where they "Give up" control of their thermostats and water heaters? Uh, that doesn't seem good to me.

that kinda blows. But tbh, I don't think it will be a big factor in the long term. Based on technological advances, it appears that solar panels approaching 40% efficiency will be possible soon - hello 700W panels. Summer mid-afternoon, a microgrid of the future will be absolutely swimming in power.

 

[ThinkFast]

Sunpower just added a cool new feature to their monitoring app.

You can now look at how much each individual panel is producing live and historically.

Useful to check that all panels are indeed functioning and what part of the house produces most.

Which app is that? mySunpower? Not seeing this feature there. Sounds interesting.

 

[ThinkFast]

GM aims to make all its EVs V2H capable by 2026. This just reinforces my contention that buying a dedicated backup battery is not very cost effective, given the cost/kw ratio compared to EV batteries and the fact that a dedicated backup battery is a one-trick pony whereas an EV is primarily for transport and oh by the way can power your home in a pinch. Perfect.

https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/08/gms-ultium-evs-v2h-bidirectional-charging/

 

[GAJ]

Which app is that? mySunpower? Not seeing this feature there. Sounds interesting.

The mysunpower monitoring app.

https://sds.mysunpower.com/monitor/

Click "panels" in the top right and it will show you use by panel total for the day and at the bottom is a time laps box where you can see hour by hour.

Interestingly our panels are all darned close in production at end of day.

Great to see if you have an underperforming panel in a grouping which we don not at this time.

 

[bojangle]

So I'm now approaching 11 weeks post city inspection this Friday. This is beyond their longest estimates of 8 weeks for PG&E approval. This is unacceptable. I fired off a 3rd contact message to Tesla. This one had a decidedly less patient and understanding tone from the first two.

I'm considering just turning the system on without approval, or maybe requesting a refund from Tesla, since I can't use what they installed, so why did I pay for it?

GM aims to make all its EVs V2H capable by 2026. This just reinforces my contention that buying a dedicated backup battery is not very cost effective, given the cost/kw ratio compared to EV batteries and the fact that a dedicated backup battery is a one-trick pony whereas an EV is primarily for transport and oh by the way can power your home in a pinch. Perfect.

https://techcrunch.com/2023/08/08/gms-ultium-evs-v2h-bidirectional-charging/

I'm not sure which EVs currently allow reverse charging to power a house, but I know Tesla doesn't allow it currently. Maybe if the market demands it, and people vote with their dollars, that might change in the future. Seems like a simple over the air update to allow something like this.

 

[GAJ]

So I'm now approaching 11 weeks post city inspection this Friday. This is beyond their longest estimates of 8 weeks for PG&E approval. This is unacceptable. I fired off a 3rd contact message to Tesla. This one had a decidedly less patient and understanding tone from the first two.

I'm considering just turning the system on without approval, or maybe requesting a refund from Tesla, since I can't use what they installed, so why did I pay for it?

The Sunpower tech met the inspector here and when the inspector passed us the the tech turned on the system before he left and it started generating power to the grid so maybe that's not such a bad idea.

 

[ThinkFast]

I'm not sure which EVs currently allow reverse charging to power a house, but I know Tesla doesn't allow it currently. Maybe if the market demands it, and people vote with their dollars, that might change in the future. Seems like a simple over the air update to allow something like this.

I believe the Hyundai Ioniq and Ford F-150 both support V2H. If you google v2h you can find out more about which vehicles support it.

 

[westie]

Had my semper solaris system final inspection this week and all is done. About $45k with the tesla battery. I'm addicted to the apps, panel app and tesla app. I'm constantly showing people like they're pictures of my children. Battery is usually charged by 2 pm and still at about 30% in the morning. The real test will be next month's pg&e bill. This month was $350. Will be exciting to see how much savings after a full month in use. Also, I give semper a 50% approval rating. They got the layout wrong 3 times and were poor on communication but when the physical work started these guys worked their asses off.

 

[ThinkFast]

The mysunpower monitoring app.

https://sds.mysunpower.com/monitor/

Click "panels" in the top right and it will show you use by panel total for the day and at the bottom is a time laps box where you can see hour by hour.

Interestingly our panels are all darned close in production at end of day.

Great to see if you have an underperforming panel in a grouping which we don not at this time.

Thanks for the heads up on this feature - had no idea. I pinged Jay and asked him about it and it turns out I didn’t get it because it wasn’t available when they installed my system a year ago. But he said just call the 800 number and ask and they should be able to configure/add it. So I did and now it’s showing up in my app. :Cool.

 

[mean dad]

Still waiting for final inspection. I had them move the combiner and power switch to a different location than originally spec'd so the plans had to be resubmitted to the city.

IT'S MY ENERGY AND I WANT IT NOW