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Here are the results for my first full "with solar" bill and monitoring in place. We'll see how close the bill comes out, but as far as the graph below, it's down to the minute from one billing period to the next. (I work at home and thus can usually see the meter reader drive up and note down the time and date). You'll notice that the blue summary is what we're looking at - for the billing period of Oct 24 - Nov 27. The estimated production of this system during a typical November was 569 kWh, while my system produced 664 kWh.
I used 1110 kWh and generated 664 kWh, leaving me with a purchase of 432 kWh. I can't yet break this down between on and off peak but my bill including the surcharges and credits I will estimate to be $43 or so. We'll see how accurate I am when it comes in.
One interesting thing to note is that, besides Hurricane Sandy causing 5 bad weather days, there were an additional 6 days of bad weather and low production, for a total of 11 days (out of 34 in the billing cycle) of poor production.
For this billing cycle, the solar panels produced 60% of my needs. With the new array I'll be installing in January, that should jump to 90% or so.
I used 1110 kWh and generated 664 kWh, leaving me with a purchase of 432 kWh. I can't yet break this down between on and off peak but my bill including the surcharges and credits I will estimate to be $43 or so. We'll see how accurate I am when it comes in.
As a comparison, the flat rate charge for Nov - June is $0.09451 / kWh, so 1110 kWh = $104.91 (plus base charge of $6.75).
As a comparison, the flat rate charge for Nov - June is $0.09451 / kWh, so 1110 kWh = $104.91 (plus base charge of $6.75).
Right, last year my bill for almost identical usage was around $110 as noted above.
This bill will have a facilities charge of $9.xx, flat rate bill deduction of about $24 for my size array, on peak demand surcharge (which I screwed up by somehow mis-programming my basement heat pump and having it come on during peak hours to the tune of a 9kW spike) and net power purchased. We'll see how it plays out.
I thought my on-peak demand would be much higher. The difference is from that being lower. Otherwise I was down to within a dollar of the actual bill for guesswork.
Did you investigate solar tiles V solar panels? My house faces South West and I think I'd have a better chance of getting tiles by the HOA v panels.
No. I think those might be unreasonably priced. The law disallows HOA from saying no to solar panels under many circumstances, so you should look into it more. My HOA had no rules or regulations whatsoever on solar panels and I asked for approval as a favor to keep the peace. Check NC law - I don't think they can say no.
The way this reads to me, even for pre-2009 covenants in place, if those existing covenants don't restrict the usage or installation of solar collector devices, they can't go back and change them later to do so. I could be wrong though.
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