Anyone else enrolled in CGS+? I feel like HECO intentionally makes these solar programs as complicated as possible, so the consumer doesn’t see how they’re getting ripped off.
Of course, everyone knows what a great deal net metering was for consumers, and now HECO is taking it out on new solar customers, by developing plans like CGS+. For those who don’t know, CGS+ stands for Customer Grid Supply Plus, and the premise that’s sold to you is that you’ll pay $0.28 per for every kWh that you pull from the grid, and earn $0.1008 for every kWh you return to the grid (these are the current rates in 2020, for Oahu). So my expectation was that if I draw 100 kWh this month, but return 300 kWh of excess solar power to the grid, I should roughly cancel out my bill and only pay the minimum connection fee of $25. Based on this understanding, I sized my solar system to ensure that I would always return more power than I draw, and in the summer months, I’ve achieved well over 3x that.
What they bury in the fine print, is that you only earn credit up to the MINIMUM of either how many kWh you draw OR how much you return. So in the example above, I’d pay 100 x $0.28 = $28 for the energy used, and I’d only get credited for 100 x $0.1008 = $10.08, since I pulled less energy than I returned (100 kWh pulled vs. 300 kWh returned). In other words, I could send 1,000 kWh of excess energy back to HECO, but they’d still only give me $10.08 of credit!
Then they promise that after 12 months, there’s a “reconciliation” where they apply any banked credits toward energy usage that in the preceding year hadn’t already had credit applied toward it. Great! This sounds wonderful — because I have a lot of banked credit — except that they screw you again by doing a “true up” calculation where they do some fancy math (seriously, it’s a textbook con), so that most of your banked credit gets forfeited back to HECO, thus “benefitting all customers.“
Lesson learned: If you own a home with net metering, don’t ever sell it. And if you’re in the market for a new solar system, make sure you know exactly what you’re getting into, and size it appropriately. The solar sales people probably won’t explain it to you, because they‘re motivated to sell you the most expensive setup possible, so do your own homework and read the fine print. I couldn’t find much online about these programs, other than what HECO and the solar companies provide, and even knowing what I know now, it’s hard to find the truth (on this HECO website, the only place to find the truth is buried on the linked pdf to understanding your bill, and even then, it’s incredibly obfuscated):
Customer Grid-Supply Plus
PS, I’m considering adding another powerwall, just to move one step closer to energy independence from this criminal enterprise.
Of course, everyone knows what a great deal net metering was for consumers, and now HECO is taking it out on new solar customers, by developing plans like CGS+. For those who don’t know, CGS+ stands for Customer Grid Supply Plus, and the premise that’s sold to you is that you’ll pay $0.28 per for every kWh that you pull from the grid, and earn $0.1008 for every kWh you return to the grid (these are the current rates in 2020, for Oahu). So my expectation was that if I draw 100 kWh this month, but return 300 kWh of excess solar power to the grid, I should roughly cancel out my bill and only pay the minimum connection fee of $25. Based on this understanding, I sized my solar system to ensure that I would always return more power than I draw, and in the summer months, I’ve achieved well over 3x that.
What they bury in the fine print, is that you only earn credit up to the MINIMUM of either how many kWh you draw OR how much you return. So in the example above, I’d pay 100 x $0.28 = $28 for the energy used, and I’d only get credited for 100 x $0.1008 = $10.08, since I pulled less energy than I returned (100 kWh pulled vs. 300 kWh returned). In other words, I could send 1,000 kWh of excess energy back to HECO, but they’d still only give me $10.08 of credit!
Then they promise that after 12 months, there’s a “reconciliation” where they apply any banked credits toward energy usage that in the preceding year hadn’t already had credit applied toward it. Great! This sounds wonderful — because I have a lot of banked credit — except that they screw you again by doing a “true up” calculation where they do some fancy math (seriously, it’s a textbook con), so that most of your banked credit gets forfeited back to HECO, thus “benefitting all customers.“
Lesson learned: If you own a home with net metering, don’t ever sell it. And if you’re in the market for a new solar system, make sure you know exactly what you’re getting into, and size it appropriately. The solar sales people probably won’t explain it to you, because they‘re motivated to sell you the most expensive setup possible, so do your own homework and read the fine print. I couldn’t find much online about these programs, other than what HECO and the solar companies provide, and even knowing what I know now, it’s hard to find the truth (on this HECO website, the only place to find the truth is buried on the linked pdf to understanding your bill, and even then, it’s incredibly obfuscated):
Customer Grid-Supply Plus
PS, I’m considering adding another powerwall, just to move one step closer to energy independence from this criminal enterprise.
