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You can also sell electricity generated by your panels back to the grid.
by schrodinger 10y ago
You can also sell electricity generated by your panels back to the grid.
- ericabiz 10y agoEffectiveness of this varies by state or region. For instance, when I was in the Bay Area 10 years ago and looked into this, PG&E would let your electricity bill get to 0, but wouldn't let you go into rebate territory. They just wouldn't pay you for the additional electricity generated. I think other states/utilities have different options. Most solar quotes take this into consideration, and quote you for enough solar to get into the minimum bill for your region (most utilities have a few hundred Kwh you can use per month at an obscenely low rate, and then it ramps up from there--solar is quoted so that you'll always stay within that cheapest range.) For my current house in Austin, I'm still interested in solar, but it was both more cost-effective and had a shorter payback time to re-insulate to R36 in the attic and redo our horrible system (which had no ducts at all--agh, stupid 1956 house) than it was to do solar at the time.
- blacksmith_tb 10y agoSadly, not in very many places. In most US states, for example, utilities have lobbied to get laws that don't allow residential customers to sell power back to them, at most net-metering agreements will allow you to get credits from any excess power your panels generate (which is how my utility handles mine - unfortunately, since I generate more than I use, I can't actually make use of those credits fully, and I'm giving away some power to the grid).