Free Nights Electricity Plan?

[Txsilverado]

I am installing a 11.5kw solar patio cover. It should provide roughly half of my required electricity. Has anyone done a free nights electric plan? I am concerned that at 15c per kWh on the free nights plan may still cost me more than my 7.5c per kWh current constant rate. Anyone have any experience with this type of situation?

[foo1bar]

I am installing a 11.5kw solar patio cover. It should provide roughly half of my required electricity. Has anyone done a free nights electric plan? I am concerned that at 15c per kWh on the free nights plan may still cost me more than my 7.5c per kWh current constant rate. Anyone have any experience with this type of situation?

I can tell you that PG&E customers near me are happy to have a higher rate during the day and a lower rate at night. They get credit for ~$.25/kwh when they're sending power to the grid. And then they pay ~$.08/kwh at night for the power they use then.
BUT that is very dependent on how the net metering works for PG&E customers here.
You will have to find out how the billing works where you live.

If you can get hour-by-hour data from the power company for the past year, I would make a best guess for this year at which plan is better. And then after it's been a year I would download the data and setup a spreadsheet to calculate how much it would cost you under each rate plan.
If you choose the flat rate for now, you probably want to still try to shift usage to nights so that it reflects the behaviors of what you'd do if you were on a cheap-at-night plan.

[Txsilverado]

I’m not seeing any net-metering plans here that benefit me when only producing 50% of my annual consumption. All net-metering plans available to me charge at least double my current 7.5c plan. The free nights also charges double my current plan as well.

[awright2009]

Im debating who to go with myself, if you produce 100% going with green mountain or reliant is a no brainer, less than that and that 13 cent energy charge might be worse in the long run. Right now I’m producing more than I use, but I’m sure when my air conditioning starts up it’ll suck up more juice. Right now I’m with MP2 Energy until I figure things out, 6.0787 cents per KWH and they pay market rate for generation last bill said only 2.5321 cents per KWH — I think they offer full net metering for solar city customers, but not 100% sure

They also pass through TDU as a fixed $4.90 for me in the oncor area. Might switch to green mountain as my spreadsheet says I’ll have a zero bill for like 7 months of the year, but hard to predict what my generation will be before I have a year of data

[Ampster]

I am installing a 11.5kw solar patio cover. It should provide roughly half of my required electricity. Has anyone done a free nights electric plan? I am concerned that at 15c per kWh on the free nights plan may still cost me more than my 7.5c per kWh current constant rate. Anyone have any experience with this type of situation?

For a while in California I had a usage pattern with two EVs that was similar in that my solar system generated about 75% of my usage. That is where the similarities stopped. The difference was in the rate differentials. In California with SCE (Southern California Edison) I could receive as much as $0.45 per kWh credit and pay as little as $0.13 per kWh.

I learned a long time ago that there was no such thing as a free lunch. However as others have suggested you can shift loads and get your bill to zero. You can even reduce the impact of a fixed charge by leveraging TOU rates. It all depends on your usage and the rate differentials.