New service, how to prep for future solar?

brantmacga said:
ahh good catch.The fuel surcharge added would put my bill around $165/mo, so, double.

I love how they word this in the rate schedule.....


What it should say is, "...Will be increased under the provisions....in the manner we've lobbied the Georgia PSC for..."
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Are the transmission charges also included? They are separate on our bills, and almost as much as the usage charges.
 
hillbilly1 said:
Solar would never pay off for me, I’m running two totally electric houses (both occupied) my highest bill is $250 a month total.
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Payback length does not change with usage (except for a little bit of economies of scale installing a larger system)

I could do hydro, if the government would allow me, which is much cheaper, but still wouldn’t have a good ROI.
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What prohibitions do you have for hydro? Are you talking about daming up a river and that sort of thing? I would think from a utilities perspective it shouldn't matter, although controls for hydro are probably not as readily available as for solar.
 
brantmacga said:
I have no interest in net metering, only offsetting my grid usage. I would like to give as little money as possible to Georgia Power.
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Here where net metering is relatively simple to do I still occasionally see a old rural PV system from back before it was.
One I saw recently the guy has a very old rural property with a 'Trace Engineering' branded Inverter / DC battery charger, the DC battery's are the old lead acid golf-cart ones his system was 48 VDC, I think his panels put out an average of 1-2kW. I don't know how the economics pencil out with battery replacement these days it would be interesting to see what the break even is for you on a 'zero export' system in Georgia.
 
electrofelon said:
Payback length does not change with usage (except for a little bit of economies of scale installing a larger system)



What prohibitions do you have for hydro? Are you talking about daming up a river and that sort of thing? I would think from a utilities perspective it shouldn't matter, although controls for hydro are probably not as readily available as for solar.
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How is that? If I'm using 1,000 kW-hr per month and install a $50K system that drops me to 100 kW-hr per month, that's very different than if I use 2,500 kW-hr per month and install the same system and drop to 250 kW-hr per month. Even though in both cases my reduction is 90%, the dollar value of the avoided costs in the second case is much larger, so my payback period in the second case is going to be much shorter, no?
 
electrofelon said:
Payback length does not change with usage (except for a little bit of economies of scale installing a larger system)



What prohibitions do you have for hydro? Are you talking about daming up a river and that sort of thing? I would think from a utilities perspective it shouldn't matter, although controls for hydro are probably not as readily available as for solar.
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In Georgia we have a law that requires a 50’ undisturbed buffer along all creeks. They made the law to keep people from building on creeks and rivers. The only exception is farmland. MicroHydro doesn’t require a large dam.
 
gadfly56 said:
How is that? If I'm using 1,000 kW-hr per month and install a $50K system that drops me to 100 kW-hr per month, that's very different than if I use 2,500 kW-hr per month and install the same system and drop to 250 kW-hr per month. Even though in both cases my reduction is 90%, the dollar value of the avoided costs in the second case is much larger, so my payback period in the second case is going to be much shorter, no?
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Your numbers don't make sense. In the first case the system is making 900 KW hours per month, and then in the second case the same system is making 2,250 kilowatt hours per month 🤔

A system of X KW will generate Y value of electricity per year, and the system will be paid off in Z years. What percentage of your electric bill that is meeting is irrelevant.
 
electrofelon said:
A system of X KW will generate Y value of electricity per year
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But the value of Y depends on your local electricity rates, and whether you have net metering or can use the electricity instantaneously to offset your consumption, or whether you end up exporting it to the POCO at whatever rate they reimburse you.

Cheers, Wayne
 
wwhitney said:
But the value of Y depends on your local electricity rates, and whether you have net metering or can use the electricity instantaneously to offset your consumption, or whether you end up exporting it to the POCO at whatever rate they reimburse you.

Cheers, Wayne
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Of course. The point I was originally trying to make was that it does not matter if you have a "small" electric bill, the payoff will still be the same as if you have a large electric bill. Of course there could be modifications to that based on a more complicated rate structure.
 
electrofelon said:
it does not matter if you have a "small" electric bill, the payoff will still be the same as if you have a large electric bill.
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That's only true if (a) your reimbursement rate for energy exported is the same as your avoided cost from not buying electricity from the POCO or (b) the PV system is small enough so that it never exports--i.e. your consumption is always large enough throughout the day even in the "small" electrical bill case. Or I guess also (c) your POCO uses buy all, sell all.

Cheers, Wayne
 
wwhitney said:
That's only true if (a) your reimbursement rate for energy exported is the same as your avoided cost from not buying electricity from the POCO or (b) the PV system is small enough so that it never exports--i.e. your consumption is always large enough throughout the day even in the "small" electrical bill case. Or I guess also (c) your POCO uses buy all, sell all.

Cheers, Wayne
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Correct. Perhaps I should have been clear that I was just talking about simple net metering. I was speaking to the common fallacy that I hear that "I don't have a large electric bill so PV will never pay off for me."
 
electrofelon said:
Correct. Perhaps I should have been clear that I was just talking about simple net metering. I was speaking to the common fallacy that I hear that "I don't have a large electric bill so PV will never pay off for me."
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Because our utility uses hydro, solar, unless they can really get the output and reliability much higher, it will not pay off for us. Where utility costs are much higher, such as California, then it could pay off. Maine is having to pay much high rates because of government regulations preventing use of hydro.
 
Hv&Lv said:
Investigate a solar install carefully.
I’ve commissioned solar on our system and people spend 30k+ on these systems. For a $250 a month bill they could put the $30k in a 5 year CD and pay the power bill for 10+ years.
We have a 62 year old man that installed a $60k system on his house. He won’t live long enough to see a ROI.

Georgia Power doesn’t allow net metering. You are paid the avoided energy rate, which for us is about 3.2¢ per kWh.
Unless they have changed in the last year..

The only people that I talk to that say they would do it again are those that are allowed to net meter. And not all of them want to go through it again.

I have a lady that bought a house with Solar on it. She wanted to get it up and running. This system had the micro investors under each panel. 2 out of 16 were working. She exported 2 kWh in 16 months.
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Investigating solar is certainly good advice! Always get three bids from reputable local installers.

And it is also important to look at the economics carefully. In my area, $30k will buy you a 12 kW grid-tied solar array, which will generate around 14,000 kWh annually if you have good solar access. Rates here are $.15/kWh and rise on average about 4% per year. We have net metering. All this gives a simple payback time of 9 years with the federal tax credit and 12 years without it. If you include the additional home value in your calculations, payback times are more like 1 year. If you assume a 12 year payback time, and a 25 year life span of the system, then after that initial 12 years, the system will offset about $50k of utility bills over the remaining 13 years, and that includes an inverter replacement mid-way through. The poor guy with the $30k CD paid around $90k in power bills over 25 years.

The calculation is different in every state depending on utility rates and incentives, but in the rainiest state in the country, installing solar makes great economic sense!
 
Not to derail this thread, but the oft repeated advice to “get three bids” is more harmful than good.

It was pushed by the AIA in order to intentionally create conflict between owners and contractors, so architects could make money stepping into this “vital” role of “protecting the homeowner from contractors”.

Homeowners have zero business involving themselves in the competitive bidding process, unless they have a staff of designers, engineers, specifiers, procurement departments, and inspectors, and the project is spec’d and designed down to the last bolt. It works for PW jobs, it doesn’t work on private residential.

This is why homeowners should find someone they trust, someone they work well with, someone who has a good reputation in their local community, and hire them.
 
electrofelon said:
But if you already have a system connected, the only way they would know if you added more is if they had the type of meter that could tell and alerts in their software or whatever to inform a human.
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In Austin and San Antonio the POCO requires permitting and inspection for adding to a PV system. Also, both POCOs require a dedicated PV meter that measures and reports PV system output irrespective of the load, so they would know if you added to the system. Beyond that, I am very much against hiding intentional rules violations even if "they would never know".
 
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