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I bought a giant solar array this fall and finally got it activated last month. The initial way I thought "net metering" would work was: If we buy & consume 20
by caseysoftware 5y ago
I bought a giant solar array this fall and finally got it activated last month. The initial way I thought "net metering" would work was:
If we buy & consume 2000kWh but then produce and sell back 2000kWh, then the total bill should be near-zero.
That's not even close.
When we buy power, we pay $0.115/kWh but when we produce excess power, they only buy it at $0.027/kWh.
Therefore, they bill us for $230 (0.115 * 2000) and credit us $54 (0.027 * 2000) so our bill is still ~$176. In order to zero out our bill, we have to sell back 4.25x more than we consume.
- sagarm 5y agoThe article notes that at least in California, infra costs are roughly 75% of real costs so the sounds about right.
- porknubbins 5y agoI didn’t realize it was that bad but kind of makes sense that they are not going to pay you “retail” prices. Another way of looking at it is there is a huge incentive to size your installation for 100%, not just plan to offset some cost of use because you pay a big premium for their power.