Is it normal for your bill to be the same pre-solar in Dec?

[azdave]

Not read all the posts but do you get shade Dec/Jan.

He says in his first post that the panels get full sun.

[mjs020294]

Not read all the posts but do you get shade Dec/Jan. Our roof is south facing but the neighbors trees come into play when the sun is below 38-39 degrees altitude, which occurs a lot in Dec/Jan.

[Ampster]

What is the location of ESP? They are either a franchise or have offices in several cities in California.

[Cshama]

I don’t think putting up more panels is the main issue here. The crazy thing is you are only producing 10% in winter of what you do in summer.

For example, in June I produced 2700kwh and in January I produced 1000kwh and we had snow covering the panels and pretty bad weather.

I think you may have a problem with you panels or inverter.

Can you look up the PVWATTS calculator on google and tell us what it says when you fill in your details.

[Ampster]

What is the location of ESP? They are either a franchise or have offices in several cities in California.

[mustardjo]

I belong to a Facebook group for solar salesmen. Just out of interest to see how they do business. They are a pretty ruthless bunch. Of course their only motivation is to sell panels to anybody and everybody no matter if it makes sense or not.

With PGE it is one of the few places it could make sense. I’m in NY and we have similarly priced electricity’ and it can make sense here too. The problem you have is you paid about 3 times too much, do you even get the tax credit. If not you paid even more then that. My 18.36 system was $22k after incentives.The other problem is that it sounds like your equipment is faulty. No way should you be making 10% of what you made in the summer unless snow is covering your panels.

if you came here first the wise advice you would have gotten is to spend your money on insulation, led lights, weatherproofing, heat pumps etc. First conserve electricity then think about panels.

When I did my panels I was also pretty ignorant but I somehow got lucky and it all worked out. But really the whole thing is so complicated and everything really depends on your individual circumstances.

For you I would suggest you try to work
it out with the solar company and see if they will help. Bad reviews really hurt their business. If you get no satisfaction try the BBB and see if that helps. Finally consider a lawyer but that could easily lead to much more costs. I would find it hard to justify suing for mor $30k when my lawyer costs $400/hour.

if you can somehow fix your system that works be best

OMG we paid 3 times too much...that is awful. My brother and I are low income seniors and my brother is on disability. We are new to solar. Don't really know anything about it. There was no money down...and according to the salesman the $116 we pay for solar plus the $10 to PGE would be about all we pay...no more high energy bills. We made a huge mistake getting this with ESP. Maybe we could go to an advocate group for seniors or disabled. We were taken advantage of. Or even a news program like "Channel 5 on your side". So other seniors don't get swindled the way we did. What ESP should do to make it right...is put up 10 more panels free of charge.

[mustardjo]

if you have had full sun all of December, then it should definitely not be 10% of the good month. If you have a month of rain and clouds it could definitely though...

That said, you should not be looking at your bills, but at your solar monitoring system (assuming that you have one hopefully).

Solar components do fail, and if you are not monitoring your system, you may wake up one morning and find out half of it or more is no longer working.

First check the solar production graph at daily interval and eventually post it there so we can see the trend.
And as mentioned previously, if you have not already done so, you should go to PVWatt.org, enter your array and location details, and generate the daily production estimate for the year.
Then graph that in Excel so you can see what daily production is supposed to look like. By comparing PVWatt production graph with the Actual production graph, we may be able to spot if something happened.

Depending on what that suggests, you may need to graph a sub period at the smallest available time interval, to check what happened during that period.

Also specify what is the orientation of your panels and the pitch of the roof and if you have any shade at all in any season. Sometimes you may have not shades in the summer when the sun is high, but shadows in the winter when the sun is low.

Yes we did have full sun most of the month of July. This is what we have:

external Inverter

1x Solar Edge Tech. SE3800H-US (240V) (S) 1 Jun20) with a Total Effective Inverter Nameplate Rating: 3.747 kW.

The PV Panels: 15x Hanwha Q cells - Q peak BLK-G5 320.
Will go to PVWATT and compare the graphs.

[J.P.M.]

No, NEM 3.0 has not been dropped.

Per the administrative law judge, on Feb. 03/2022, it will only not appear on the Commission's voting agenda until further notice. It seems the assigned (new) commissioner "has requested additional time to analyze the record and consider revisions to the proposed decision based on party comments".

It isn't necessarily and probably not going away.

See the CPUC website for details.

[Cshama]

I belong to a Facebook group for solar salesmen. Just out of interest to see how they do business. They are a pretty ruthless bunch. Of course their only motivation is to sell panels to anybody and everybody no matter if it makes sense or not.

With PGE it is one of the few places it could make sense. I’m in NY and we have similarly priced electricity’ and it can make sense here too. The problem you have is you paid about 3 times too much, do you even get the tax credit. If not you paid even more then that. My 18.36 system was $22k after incentives.The other problem is that it sounds like your equipment is faulty. No way should you be making 10% of what you made in the summer unless snow is covering your panels.

if you came here first the wise advice you would have gotten is to spend your money on insulation, led lights, weatherproofing, heat pumps etc. First conserve electricity then think about panels.

When I did my panels I was also pretty ignorant but I somehow got lucky and it all worked out. But really the whole thing is so complicated and everything really depends on your individual circumstances.

For you I would suggest you try to work
it out with the solar company and see if they will help. Bad reviews really hurt their business. If you get no satisfaction try the BBB and see if that helps. Finally consider a lawyer but that could easily lead to much more costs. I would find it hard to justify suing for mor $30k when my lawyer costs $400/hour.

if you can somehow fix your system that works be best

[mustardjo]

There are several issues here. And warnings for people who want to go solar.

Assuming that the $31k is before incentives then back of the envelope calculations look like you paid $6/kw. which is incredibly expensive. Did you get batteries? If not you were fleeced.

Do you have micro inverters or string inverters? Going down 90% in the winter is ridiculous . Clearly there is a problem. Why don’t you check the pvwatts calculator. What does it say you should be producing?

Also you better hope Nem3 gets modified or else your deal will get considerably worse.

To give you an example my system produced about 40% in January compared to June which is just about what the pvwatts calculator says it should.

Yes, that is how we are feeling. We believe we have been fleeced. My brother and I are low income seniors. My brother is also disabled. We are new to solar. The salesman made it sound so good. We would pay nothing down and minimum (less than $15 a month to PGE). We would love nothing more then to break the contract. If that is not possible...we would like more panels equal to the amount we paid for them. No we have no battery.

[mustardjo]

Just read that Nem 3.0 has been dropped. That’s good news as it would have added $40 to your bill

Thank God for that.

[mustardjo]

A lein and payments of $116 per month? Did you finance or is this a lease?

We financed

[scrambler]

if you have had full sun all of December, then it should definitely not be 10% of the good month. If you have a month of rain and clouds it could definitely though...

That said, you should not be looking at your bills, but at your solar monitoring system (assuming that you have one hopefully).

Solar components do fail, and if you are not monitoring your system, you may wake up one morning and find out half of it or more is no longer working.

First check the solar production graph at daily interval and eventually post it there so we can see the trend.
And as mentioned previously, if you have not already done so, you should go to PVWatt.org, enter your array and location details, and generate the daily production estimate for the year.
Then graph that in Excel so you can see what daily production is supposed to look like. By comparing PVWatt production graph with the Actual production graph, we may be able to spot if something happened.

Depending on what that suggests, you may need to graph a sub period at the smallest available time interval, to check what happened during that period.

Also specify what is the orientation of your panels and the pitch of the roof and if you have any shade at all in any season. Sometimes you may have not shades in the summer when the sun is high, but shadows in the winter when the sun is low.

[Ampster]

...
...... We did not put a $31,000 lein on our house to pay TWICE as much for power in the winter months. .......

A lein and payments of $116 per month? Did you finance or is this a lease?

[Cshama]

Just read that Nem 3.0 has been dropped. That’s good news as it would have added $40 to your bill