Post your power bill before and after solar

[jboy210]

HI,

It would be nice to see the impact of solar on people's electricity consumption. If you could, post power bill or better yet a chart of costs before and after solar. Your utility may provide this chart, Mine, PG&E does.

The information that would be useful includes the chart/bill, general location, power company, power plan description (Time of Use with hours, EV charging with hours, etc), solar system description, and any other information you feel important.

 

[jboy210]

Location: Tri-Valley, Northern California
Power Company: PG&E
Plan: Time of Use, peak rates 4-9 PM M-F
System: Tesla SolarRoof 12.75 kW, 2 Powerwall 2
Notes: System install complete April 2, 2020. System run in off-line mode ensuring not power pushing back to grid from May 2020 to late August 2020.

 

[zanary]

HI,

It would be nice to see the impact of solar on people's electricity consumption. If you could, post power bill or better yet a chart of costs before and after solar. Your utility may provide this chart, Mine, PG&E does.

The information that would be useful includes the chart/bill, general location, power company, power plan description (Time of Use with hours, EV charging with hours, etc), solar system description, and any other information you feel important.

Got PG&E at least, if you have PV + Storage you get no electricity bill and no charts from the PG&E web site.

Your monthly bills consists of gas charges and your PG&E connection charge of like $10 or $11.
Just an FYI.

 

[jboy210]

Got PG&E at least, if you have PV + Storage you get no electricity bill and no charts from the PG&E web site.

Your monthly bills consists of gas charges and your PG&E connection charge of like $10 or $11.
Just an FYI.

By storage do you mean more than 2 PWs? We have 2.

 

[zanary]

By storage do you mean more than 2 PWs? We have 2.

I had two powerwalls originally, and got the red referral third one installed. I'm also on EV-A, so once I was moved over to NEM2MT-B, I could never see usage details on their web site, and my bill only shows $10.52 for electricity chargers every month. On my true-up, If I were to generate enough throughout the past 12 months to = consumption (which was the case last year), then I paid nothing. So to date I'm on year three, and I've never been hit with any charges beyond the $10.52 per month for electricity. My monthly bills however still show all of my natural gas usage which I pay monthly like everyone else.

 

[woferry]

My PG&E Energy Usage Details page stopped the billing cycle that I received PTO. So my graph only includes a few days of solar production May 2019, and nothing else after that.

 

[SoCal Dave]

My PG&E Energy Usage Details page stopped the billing cycle that I received PTO. So my graph only includes a few days of solar production May 2019, and nothing else after that.

Wow, PG&E seems to really suck across the board.

In this case SCE gives me a very good picture of our usage. The one thing which would be nice is how much each day is costing from a TOU and NBC perspective.

 

[bob_p]

We've had our 15.4 KW/4 PW system running since the end of December.

In 2019, we were on a fixed price plan @ $.111/KWh.

In December, we switched to a lower fixed price plan @ $.091/KWh.

And after operating with our solar/PW system, in June, we switched to a Free Nights plan (free electricity from 9PM-9AM) @ $.201/KWh during the day.

Our monthly costs were (2019 listed first, then 2020)

• Jan: $356 -> $140
• Feb: $293 -> $95
• Mar: $319 -> $88
• Apr: $369 -> $62
• May: $408 -> $164
• Jun: $531 -> $50 (starting the Free Nights plan)
• Jul: $550 -> $105
• Aug: $525 -> $131

Before switching to the Free Nights plan in June, I used the smart meter data collected from Jan to May and determined Free Nights would be better than having a net metering plan - especially when we can schedule charging of our S & X overnight (for free).

NOTE that our system was planned to provide about 50% of our average power usage (including EV charging) - enough to lower our electricity bills and to operate essential systems for extended periods off grid (hurricane). We didn't expect to drive our electricity costs to $0, and are satisfied that we should reduce our electricity costs by 85% under the Free Nights plan (at least until they exclude customers with solar/energy storage).

 

[MorrisonHiker]

This isn't the easiest to understand graph, but you can see all charged amounts for electricity for the past 24 months. Since March of this year, we've actually been earning credits since our production exceeds our consumption. March was a $31 credit. April was a $101 credit. May was a $227 credit. June was a $207 credit. July was a $219 credit. August was a $187 credit. We chose to earn credits instead of receiving monthly checks back. Our utility allows us to roll the credits over indefinitely (with no true-up). Hopefully this winter our summer production will cover any usage from November - March that our winter production can't cover.

We regularly charge 3 to 4 Teslas and don't have any ICE vehicles so we also save since we no longer pay hundreds of dollars in monthly gas costs.

Total Delivered (not total production) vs. Total Consumption:

We have Xcel and live in the Denver metro area. We have a 20.5 kW system and 4 Powerwalls and are on ToU. We rarely ever pay anything besides off-peak rates and 98.5% of our grid usage is during off-peak times.

I've also included screenshots from the Tesla app for 2020 below.

 

[charlesj]

Mine goes back to 2012. Before was $67, after was $2.71 for 19 days [

 

[jboy210]

$2.71/mo!!! Amazing.

 

[MorrisonHiker]

$2.71/mo!!! Amazing.

Not bad but I prefer my -$227 for the month of May.

 

[charlesj]

$2.71/mo!!! Amazing.

That was for 19 days and 2012. Checked a later bill in 2012, it was $4.82.
Today 2020 it is $10 +/-

My time expired to change original docs, scrubbing pers info.
So, here it is again:

 

[charlesj]

Not bad but I prefer my -$227 for the month of May.

[...]

Yes, but that is not how true-up pays you at end of the true up year.

Oh, I see you are in CO so you may be different. Also, that $-227 credit for excess generation? Was that 148kWh net usage? Why all that credit?
What was that "other charges" for?

And your gas is also very cheap compared to CA.

I see those figures on my bill as well now but true-up is way smaller. So, in reality it is meaningless to me. I don't get that minus credit to pay for gas each month although my gas usage is about 1/2 therm per day when no radiant heat is called for which is about 5 month a year only.

 

[zƬesla]

All - reminder to scrub personal info (e.g., full name, address, account #) from bills/etc before posting

 

[jboy210]

Not bad but I prefer my -$227 for the month of May.

Is there some sort of upper limit to this? Or at some point do you own the Power Company?

 

[MorrisonHiker]

Yes, but that is not how true-up pays you at end of the true up year.

Oh, I see you are in CO so you may be different.
What was that "other charges" for?

And your gas is also very cheap compared to CA.

I see those figures on my bill as well now but true-up is way smaller. So, in reality it is meaningless to me. I don't get that minus credit to pay for gas each month although my gas usage is about 1/2 therm per day when no radiant heat is called for which is about 5 month a year only.

Their billing is really weird how they tally things up and then roll over to the next month. They record the production as a charge since it comes from a different production account vs. the consumption account. They then credit it to one account and charge it to the other to balance the accounts out. It's crazy confusing, I know, but it reminds me of college accounting classes that I took. Also, our solar production only offsets solar costs, so unfortunately we still have a bill for natural gas.

Is there some sort of upper limit to this? Or at some point do you own the Power Company?

We don't have any annual true-up here. They just roll the credits over from month to month. For the bill screenshots below, you can see that I had to pay $46.40 for natural gas and connection to the grid and then they credited the $227.96 to the account which rolls over. We actually have over 4800 kWh in credits currently and they are at different ToU rates (peak, part-peak/shoulder and off-peak). 98.5% of our grid usage is during off-peak, so peak and part-peak shoulder credits go even farther when they calculate our bill. Since we chose the credit option instead of a check each month, the kWh credits roll over indefinitely but we can never cash them out.

From the above bill, it looks like we took 211 kWh from the grid but sent 2165 kWh back to the grid, hence the huge credit. Since they roll over from month to month and keep accumulating during the nicer production months (March - October), we should have enough to cover our lower production November - February.

 

[charlesj]

Their billing is really weird how they tally things up and then roll over to the next month. They record the production as a charge since it comes from a different production account vs. the consumption account. They then credit it to one account and charge it to the other to balance the accounts out. It's crazy confusing, I know, but it reminds me of college accounting classes that I took.



We don't have any annual true-up here. They just roll the credits over from month to month. For the bill screenshots below, you can see that I had to pay $46.40 for natural gas and connection to the grid and then they credited the $227.96 to the account which rolls over. We actually have over 4800 kWh in credits currently and they are at different ToU rates (peak, part-peak/shoulder and off-peak). 98.5% of our grid usage is during off-peak so peak and part-peak shoulder credits go even farther. Since we chose the credit option instead of a check each month, the kWh credits roll over indefinitely but we can never cash them out.

...H]

Thanks. My head is spinning. Good thing I type sitting down.

Your gas is dirt cheap. While your gas is $.58 total charge per therm PG&E last month was $1.37 part month and $1.41 the rest, almost 3x.

I really like this part the kWh credits roll over indefinitely but we can never cash them out.

So, in essence you are not really getting usable credit at years end? Here, my local community power buy excess at 2x +/- what PG&E would pay and that pays for gas a few month at true up time, real reduction.
This year I received $70, about 2 month of gas or so.

 

[MorrisonHiker]

Thanks. My head is spinning. Good thing I type sitting down.

Your gas is dirt cheap. While your gas is $.58 total charge per therm PG&E last month was $1.37 part month and $1.41 the rest, almost 3x.

I really like this part the kWh credits roll over indefinitely but we can never cash them out.

Yeah, we could've been paid for them every month but I think they send actual checks instead of direct deposit. I haven't really written checks in over a decade so I didn't want to have to deal with depositing them every month manually. It was easier for us to just roll the credits over automatically. Normally we wouldn't have such a large credit but I started working from home 5 months ago so our usage has gone way done this year. Since we aren't using as much electricity for the cars, we're looking at other ways of using the power, such a heated electric floor for the bathroom, possibly adding a heat pump, etc.

We are still eligible for REC (renewable energy credits). This is on top of the credits we get applied to our account. We found out this summer that they are supposed to be sending those checks monthly (so we won't be able to avoid receiving paper checks. Doh!) and they would amount to 1.5 cents per kWh. There was a problem with our account so they owe us over $726 for our RECs. We get those payments for the first 10 years and after that, they go to Tesla. We are working on getting that straightened out.

 

[charlesj]

Yeah, we could've been paid for them every month but I think they send actual checks instead of direct deposit. I haven't really written checks in over a decade so I didn't want to have to deal with depositing them every month manually. It was easier for us to just roll the credits over automatically. Normally we wouldn't have such a large credit but I started working from home 5 months ago so our usage has gone way done this year. Since we aren't using as much electricity for the cars, we're looking at other ways of using the power, such a heated electric floor for the bathroom, possibly adding a heat pump, etc.

We are still eligible for REC (renewable energy credits). This is on top of the credits we get applied to our account. We found out this summer that they are supposed to be sending those checks monthly (so we won't be able to avoid receiving paper checks. Doh!) and they would amount to 1.5 cents per kWh. There was a problem with our account so they owe us over $726 for our RECs. We get those payments for the first 10 years and after that, they go to Tesla. We are working on getting that straightened out.

If that credit is really yours, why not apply to gas costs at the company level, no check needed. Then you would really be reducing costs.
Just noticed the amount they would pay you per kWh. Highway robbery. PG&E payed about 3 cents before the community power changeover.