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Installed solar one month, have question about the utility bill

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  • #16
    Originally posted by hpdad View Post
    My question is: does POCO charges me with their price on night use 15kWh (0.23kWh, Tier 1), or I can use the 20kWh excess that my solar put in the grid day time?

    If I can use the excess 20kWh it will be free rather than using from POCO will be more expensive.
    Depends on what the billing agreement is.

    For PG&E:
    Generate 50kwh, use 30kwh locally (before gets to the meter) - net is 20kwh going out during peak times ($.22/kwh) = $4.40 credit
    At night, use 15kwh at $.12/kwh (offpeak rate) = $1.80
    Let's say you do that for 30 days straight - one billing cycle.
    end result is a credit of $78 waiting to be used.
    BUT they throw in a $15 charge for the meter.
    So you have to pay $15 for the month and have $78 to use toward electricity next month or the month after.

    If after 12 months you have a net credit in $ amount, that gets zeroed out - but if you also have a net positive number of kwh, then you get $.04/kwh for those extra kwh.
    So in this example it'd be $15 * 12 - 5kwh*12*$.04/kwh = $178.60 for the whole year.

    (these numbers are made-up - but are close to reality.)

    For Silicon Valley Electric, it's all $.11/kwh
    So if you send 10kwh to the grid and use 10kwh back later it comes out as $0.
    And if at the end of the year you have net positive kwh, I think they pay it out at about $.04/kwh.

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    • #17
      Created account today, logged in, and see this message on my account:

      "Usage Data Unavailable For Net Energy Metering Accounts
      We are working to resolve the issue and estimate it may take 3-4 weeks. Usage is still being tracked. This issue will not impact bills or credits. We apologize for the inconvenience. For more information about billing system updates to your Net Energy Metering (NEM) account, please visit the Help Center."


      Hopefully, they will resolve this issue soon.

      I download the usage in April (4/1 - 4/29). The data looked ok to my understanding. 0 usage somewhere noon to 5 pm.

      This is summary of usage from SCE and solar produce each day. The top numbers are from SCE, bottom numbers are solar produced. When I add SCE's number, the usage is 279kWh as they charged me on the first post. Solar produced 976kWh.
      7.27 7.64 7.92 11.9 9.08 9.31 8.85 12.1 14.7 13.3 10.5 8.26 8.06 8.54 7.42 6.94 9.03 10.9 13.1 9.41 8.61 9.12 8.5 8.96 7.58 8.92 6.62 9.27 16.5
      27.2 34.8 37.3 37.8 35.6 36.3 30.1 29.5 38.1 33.8 24.8 29.6 15.1 29.1 43.1 45 42.6 46 44.2 44.3 17.2 10.3 23.4 41.2 29.6 19.2 38.4 47.6 44.8
      Last edited by hpdad; 05-10-2021, 03:16 PM.

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      • #18
        I remember when my PV system first went live, the first bill from SDGE was kind of wonky. By the time the second bill came it was all worked out. Maybe just give it some time.

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        • #19
          Originally posted by hpdad View Post
          Created account today, logged in, and see this message on my account:

          "Usage Data Unavailable For Net Energy Metering Accounts
          We are working to resolve the issue and estimate it may take 3-4 weeks. Usage is still being tracked. This issue will not impact bills or credits. We apologize for the inconvenience. For more information about billing system updates to your Net Energy Metering (NEM) account, please visit the Help Center."


          Hopefully, they will resolve this issue soon.

          I download the usage in April (4/1 - 4/29). The data looked ok to my understanding. 0 usage somewhere noon to 5 pm.

          This is summary of usage from SCE and solar produce each day. The top numbers are from SCE, bottom numbers are solar produced. When I add SCE's number, the usage is 279kWh as they charged me on the first post. Solar produced 976kWh.
          FYI Green Button download for NEM accounts has been broken since at least April 7. That's when I contacted SCE to tell them it was broken (after their website upgrade). The opened a ticket for me and eventually the 3-4 week notice showed up on the website. The 4 week window ran out on 5/31 and magically on that date a new notice of "mid-June" appeared. The 0 numbers you're seeing are periods where you produced more than you consumed. I download my data every few days to populate into a spreadsheet that tracks my actual costs and payback. I've been doing this since I installed in 2017 and the 0's are what I'm seeing mid-day when I know that I was over producing. I also have a Rainforest Eagle hooked to my meter and I upload that and my Solaredge data to PVOutput which still gives me a good picture of how I'm doing since my relevant period ends at the end of June so I want to make sure my true up will go as expected (owe nothing even with net consumption over the year).

          FYI - with respect to the Climate Credit. Something changed this year. In previous years it went into the "virtual" balance from consumption and production that is part of your true up. At the end of the year it would end up getting refunded as long as the virtual balance was at least as negative as the climate credit. This year it seems to have been immediately applied to my monthly ~$10 charge (grandfathered NEM 1.0)

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