Electric rates.

I know, I am up for renewal this month and the rates have freaking doubled!!

 

I'm in a co-op, so I can't really choose my provider, but mine is around 12.9 cents. Luckily, my bills haven't been too bad lately. Can't wait for summer bills. Woo hoo!

From looking around, it seems like 13-17 cents is common (?)

 

Electricity follows natural gas. With the embargoes on Russia, the global supply of natural gas is choked. ALSO INFLATION CUASED SOLEELY BY JOE Brandon !, IN A YEAr!1111!!

 

The PEC rocks. 9.7 cents (+ 22.50 per meter)

 

I made 1800 kwh via solar in May. Thanks to lots of family being under one bill, I have a huge baseload so not a lot goes back to the grid (where I get paid 3.4 cents per kwh) and instead we don't get charged the .12 cents from the power company.

Haven't got the bill yet, but I'm expecting to see a $170 difference between having solar and not. I also have a smaller system that can't feed back to the grid or charge batteries.... So it's use it or lose it. I turn the a/c around 70 when it sunny. Why not, right?

 

You're wearing the AC out! lol. I want to go solar, but I'm too close to selling my house (hopefully in the next 2-3 years), and I think it still takes around 7-10 years to break even on those things, doesn't it? I'm definitely looking into it on my next house, though.

 

When I looked at the estimated payback period several years ago, I think it was around 12 years.

I am surprised to see that it has dropped so much since then.

 

Huge price difference between diy and professionally installed as well. I'm around 5 year payback with the recent things I've added. That includes some pretty big projects like installing bigger power lines to the barn where the panels are and new breaker boxes and such.

 

Is the non-electrician part of DIY something a decent - good farm mechanic level person can handle?

 

Man. . . I think sucked me in with like 10.1 cents thing . .. then I see a 4.9 surcharge or some fee per KW

Rocket River

 

Depends. If you're doing a ground array like me, absolutely. If you're mounting to a roof, I'd be more cautious. I have panels on the roof of a barn also, and I was very liberal with the roofing tar where I bolted things through the sheet metal roof into perlins... but I get a few drops of water in a heavy rain. NBD for a barn, but I wouldn't find that acceptable for a house. There are tons of mounting systems made for shingle roofs but I've never tried them.

As far as mounting panels, using unistrut/superstrut and associated hardware is super easy. Mounting microinverters is lol easy. The big string inverters are no harder than a TV wall mount. The "electrician" part is where the pita lies. Especially if you're a dummy like me and have 5 different "systems" that all need separate wiring, cut off switches, labels (for firefighters/emergency). So much conduit, direct burial wire, new breaker box for 5 damn systems, etc...

Having only one piece of electronics between solar panels and the electric company big enough for everything would have gone a long way to making things easier/simple.

 

Good because that is what I thought it would be.


I did think of something related to the DIY versus electrician question.

If your barn is in reasonable shape, then I would expect that you have some insurance on it. Does the insurance company require that an electrician handle (or at least inspect) the key electrical parts of a solar setup?

Then the same type of question in regards to the electricity company or grid provider that you connected to.

 

Yes, it must be professionally inspected. In my case three times, I also had to draw out a diagram for the electric company. All electronics must be UL1471 compliant, so lots of the cheap stuff on Amazon is a no go. Another detail that is easy to miss is lots of equipment out there is single phase 230v. One hot leg, one neutral, one ground. We use split phase 230v in the US, two hots, one neutral, one ground. There are ways to make that work but it generally isn't worth it... make sure you're buying something meant for the US market.

 

Last 3 years 7 cents kWh (Veteran Energy), switching to Champion 18 months 20 cents during the week and free on weekends.

Didn't want to lock in at 17 cents for 24 or 36 months, hoping these prices come back down.

 

I decided to go longer term with none of that "hit >1000 and will credit you x dollars while, if you only go > 500, then we'll rob you blind" bullsh!t!

This time around...I'm not unnecessarily running up more usage in colder months to get my "> 1000" credit. I would occasionally get burned just going "> 500" only and that rate is really high because you're on the plan friendly to "> 1000" to get the credit. It's all a big game.

I have a comparable flat rate now going on both "> 500" to "> 1000" to "> 2000" usage levels. And, I'm sure it will all come out comparable in the end to the other plan I was on except without all the monkey business power usage. BUT, obviously rates have gone up so I'm expecting to pay at least around $20 more per month than what I was.

I don' t know if I picked the BEST plan out there. But, I tried while navigating this cesspool of electric rate POOPY.

 

I was shopping for a contract for my wife's business and found that the supplier's variable price they'd roll her to was actually cheaper than signing a contract. Price is escalating so quick, they don't want to wake up sleeping customers with it. Of course, they'll bump it up each month, so I need to keep checking the rate so I can switch later.

It's just timing. They will recoup their gas costs from you later.

I think they come down. Gas prices have been high with the turmoil in the gas markets. Either production will go up or the Russia thing gets resolved. In the meantime, I hope you have stock in the O&G companies!

 

Absolutely. I'm at 10 right now. Been out of a contract for a while now but stuck with them since they kept the rate low.

Most will jack up your rates as soon as your contract is up.

 

I use Texas Power Agents. They switch me every 4 or 5 months to the lowest rate they can find. Currently in a 4 month contract with Rhythm paying around 12 kWh.

Highly recommend them. Their fee is only $100/year. Great for people like me who want to get the lowest rate but don't really have time to mess with keeping track and switching, etc.

 

When I worked for an electric company, tiered plans were the ones that made me chuckle. Customers would do every type of contortion trying to fit into tiers, but only after getting burned on their first bill. When our customer support team tried to explain how the bill was calculated, it would get worse, because only 50% of them could grasp the concept. At least you got the concept. lol. Depending on tiering and your actual usage and consistency of usage, you really could save money over a flat rate, though.

And I just checked my latest rates. It looks like it jumped from the aforementioned 12.9 cents to 14.4 for June. A positive number for the PCRF... lovely. I contemplated switching to a TOU plan my electric company has, but it looks like they closed that to existing/new customers. Looking at the prices now for it, it doesn't look like it'd save me anything anyway.