Electric bill outrages

New York Post ^ | 5/16/12 | JOHN HINDERAKER

[JustaDumbBlonde]

Went solar right after Christmas and our electricity bill went from $300+ a month to last month’s bill of $6. We would have run a credit, but there were a couple of weeks of very cloudy weather and rain.

[going hot]

Interesting.

What was the overall cost to install.

Is there an auto switch to the main box, do you feed back to the grid automatically?

[JustaDumbBlonde]

Cost of the installation was $80k. However, with a 30% rebate from the State of Louisiana and a 50% federal tax credit, the cost to us was 20%, or $16k.

What we did was finance the $16k for 5 years, and the amount we would have been paying our electric provider each month, we are paying to the bank on the note.

Our energy will be free and clear in 5 years, at which time there is no way to even predict what electric costs will be. The one thing we know for sure is that electricity is never going to be cheaper in our lifetimes.

[going hot]

Thank you for the info.

[JustaDumbBlonde]

You're welcome. Realized that I did not answer your question about the grid.

During the day when the solar is operating, any power that we do not consume automatically feeds into the grid and our meter runs backwards. If the grid goes down, for whatever reason, a switch is automatically thrown and the system switches from being connected to the grid to our backup propane generator that feeds the solar system enough power to keep it up and running. If our system does not "sense" any power coming in, it shuts down, thus the generator when the grid goes down.

Any grid-tied system is required to shut off when the grid goes down so that power company workers don't get electrocuted while repairing the grid system. Since that would have left us without power during an outage, we decided that the generator backup was necessary. We are close enough to the coast and tropical weather that we are prone to long outages in hurricane season. That kind of defeats the purpose of having solar power, so we figured out how to get around that.

[mrsmith]

Pretty irresistable- though, of course I disapprove of the subsidies. Since they were there though you’d have been foolish not to take them.

Interestingly with the end of Chinese solar panel dumping and, eventually, the end of solar subsidies your investment eill become even more valuable if you sell the house.

[JustaDumbBlonde]

I did the best I could with the solar panels. The very best made panels are from a German company, but they are produced at a plant in Georgia, USA. The Chinese panels are nowhere near the quality.

[Kellis91789]

Anything else you buy, you get a qty discount.

If it was up to the suppliers, they would push as much through their facilities as they could and get the most out of already paid for infrastructure costs.

Unfortunately, the environmentalists have taken over all the utility commissions so “conservation” is encouraged and higher usage is discouraged. It is a blatant distortion of economics for ideological purposes. Those of us who believe in free markets should pay more attention to who is being elected or appointed to these commissions.