I live in Connecticut. We get charged for electricity & service:
This is from a "winter" bill (541 KWH), No A/C and we heat with Oil. I do not have solar.
Cost per KWH of electricity used: $0.11484
Cost per KWH of service to deliver energy (lines etc): $0.14
Fixed cost: per month for CEO's boat payment: $9.62
I would be interested in what others pay.
Best seems to be 5.1p export and 28p import...
Could only dream of 60/40
My numbers are for incoming only, I don't have solar. I think if I had solar the amount I put back on the "Grid" is the same as I pay (per KWH). I'm not sure of the service / distribution charges.
My opinion is this 1:1 reduction is artificial to entice more solar installations.
For me, I don't believe solar is justifiable from a cost standpoint. Besides we don't have a directionally suitable roof to put the panels on.
Question regarding your solar installation. When the grid goes down our solar systems cannot generate AC mains on their own. I understand the electronics would be costly.
However will the solar provide DC energy in some form?
This allows the battery to supply electric in the evenings and night when theres no solar electric avaiable, it will also act as a whole house ups if we have a power cut, you can scale the battery packs up to about 48kw/h
Cost wise in the uk is about £8000 for 9kwp of panels and £6000 for 10kw/h of batterys.
Thats installed price.
This should allow me to be self powered for 8 months of the year and reduce my electric bill for the other 4 months by 1/3.
For me however that cost would pay for 10 years of my full electric bill. Not worth it here. Oh I do have a gas generator that has been able to keep our food cold and the house warm when the power is out. I guess I'll stay that way for a while.
I did read a few case studies on solar. On was from Utah, USA. The final outcome was after (what will be) 20 years, the financial cost vs 100% on grid was a wash. i.e. there was little or no cost difference.
I have 2 Tesla Powerwall batteries (13.5 kWh X 2) so the solar panels will continue to provide power to the house and re-charge the batteries. Our use case was really based on the fragility of the Texas energy grid and a hedge against crazy energy prices down the road, and was not a pure ROI based decision.
Our main draw is AC during the summer and the pool equipment. On good sunny days (like a few this month), we can be completely off grid and even supply back to the grid.
$0.0539/KWh consumption
$0.030/KWh distribution charge (includes CEO yacht "fee")
Ohio recently had the local incumbent Elec utility bribe the politicians to pass a bogus fee to get the consumers to pay for the decommissioning of 2 nuclear plants. Its making its way through the courts.
I'll be dead before solar would be cost effective for me. Plus we have considerable cloud cover due to Great Lakes weather influence. Our area was the site of a former WWII munitions plant courtesy of the cloud cover providing protection from aerial bombing.
I looked into it 4 years ago and it looked 15+ years to repay.
But now that our energy bills have basically trebled and we are looking like another 50% in 6 months time its very attractive with a roi around 6 years
I looked into solar some years ago as well. Their "projections" of energy cost increases were wildly over blown.
My bill in Sept of 1985 for 581 KWH was $57
My most recent bill for 541 KWH is $138
37 year span; my 1985 bill in today's dollars would be 2.64 * (57 *541/581) = $140
I have no issue with solar to reduce emissions and foreign dependency (except the solar cell are made in a foreign country). Personally I think solar cells for individual homes are not the right way to go. Ideally solar farms in perhaps a Co-op structure would be better than distributed installations.
Thanks to google: $1 in 1985 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $2.64 today, an increase of $1.64 over 37 years. The dollar had an average inflation rate of 2.66% per year between 1985 and today, producing a cumulative price increase of 163.68%.
Anything to read Victron data? Thinking about getting a Victron Cerbo GX which has a ethernet connection to monitor my MPPT controllers remotely using there free remote internet portal.
They have an API: VRM API v2 Documentation | Victron Energy documentation
Maybe not fully 100% 'solar' but it's related to it.
Any integrations with home battery?
I have this beauty and I read the stats in detail with a app, even got 2 apps. But it would be great to get it connected with my smart home...
I was thinking to let hubitat manage my boiler depending on the % of the battery.
Now hubitat turns it just on at 2PM (when power is NOT cheap) and doesn't care if it's 'free' solar energy from the battery or not (when it's a cloudy day).
example of what was thinking.
If battery is <20% at 2PM don't turn on the boiler but wait after 10PM when the grid offers cheaper power.
If battery is 95% turn on the boiler once a day (so even when it's morning an the battery is full it will be drained to heat the water and make 'room' for more power.
I am finding this is not the case. I have a Tesla Powerwall2 and as soon as it hits 100% capacity it begins discharging until it hits the reserve level, even during peak production. The effect is you never export to the grid, and by the time evening cones (about 6:00 p.m.) the power wall has drained to its reserve level and wont begin recharging until the next morning a d you are pulling off the grid all night. I'm beginning to wish I had opted for a natural gas generator instead of the power wall. So far, no one has been able to tell me how to get it to discharge only at night, and i do not see any settings. The Tesla website says there are supposed to be 7 modes, mine apparently only has 2.
I have Powerwall+ and that is not the behavior I am seeing. Prior to receiving "permission to operate" from our utility provider, the system would not export to the grid. However, once that was approved, after the Powerwall reaches 100%, excess generation is fed back to the grid.
Mines a Powerwall2, not sure if that is a different name for the same thing or not. I'll experiment with it again and see. The only way I was able to stop that was to set the reserve at 100%. We have gotten horrible instruction on this system. Seems to be a loop . If i have the reserve set anywhere BELOW 100%, it will discharge to the reserve level as soon as it hits 100% charge, then fully recharge, then discharge to the reserve, etc. etc. over and over, never letting anything go to the grid, or at least very little.
I believe they are different but that is still not the behavior you should be seeing. Where are you based? If you are using the Tesla app, check whether you have "Permission to Export" (in Settings -> Advanced Options) set you "Yes".
Yeah, I have that first and second Screen, but the bottom of the third isn't in my app. Where you have Permission to Export , I have "Grid Charging" and its grayed out.
Off battery topic... I used Eyedro EYEFI-4 and the XML stats to get my solar vs. used power generation. I would think to have a battery on the AC to kick off on stats. Control Relay or REST trigger to have your battery charge vs dispense on the grid.
