rayfellow, I have 5.8kW of PV on my house grid connected to Duke Energy. Duke is very actively lobbying to change their already overly discouraging net-metering where if I make any extra power over the course of a year, they get it for $0.00. Despite the power I make in excess is all during peak hours.
The current (haha) cant is that those of us who have invested in owner generated power are hurting the poorest users who cannot afford to reduce their use. The idea is, if my bill goes to 0kWh then they are providing a free storage service to me for my peak time generation, despite that I draw it back during off peak time, when they cost is much lower. They choose to disregard that marginal gains they make on this. What they want now is to pay me less for the power I generate than the power they sell me. My power is is very average (was anyway) 29kWh a day averaged over a year for several years. My best month so far I used 426kWh for the month and 3/4 of it was off peak. My daily average was 14kWh so my bill is for half the power it was. This tallies well for me because I am no longer buying peak time power at the same rate and the electric service disregarding all the other fees and taxes was $12 this month. I am probably saving $80 to $120 a month at this rate. I probably buy some of the least expensive power in the county . Some places like Rhode Island pay double or triple what I do. Duke Energy would like to see me pay them a lot more, but it makes their competitive advantage even less - so they are taking a very political and mis-informational approach to fighting against this. As power cost rises, and I am sure it will, the $20 a month I still pay that would offset the cost of a used couple of auto battery packs would take awhile to pay off. Probably 6 or 7 years. Not bad. If power cost go up as they certainly will. This is a real swag though because batteries are going to get cheaper and cheaper and the cost of infrastructure to operate off grid is unknown to me and likely to decrease with popularity and volume. The current equipment PV panels ,inverter , etc. - if you buy the good stuff - is very good. Dependable for 25 - 30 years. So the utilities really do have some competition coming. They are trying very hard to fight against it. It is a shame because from a societal point of view the outcome for more people would be better if they were working with it, realizing their existing business will need to change drastically. Duke Energy is not on our side here. Keep a weather eye towards your own power utility. Mike On Wed, Apr 16, 2014 at 11:11 PM, rayfellow <[email protected]> wrote: > "Option 2, however, is where it gets interesting. A Nissan LEAF battery > with > 80% of its capacity remaining still can hold about 19 kWh; .... > > Residential applications are what worry utility companies, though. As > reported by Forbes in a similar article, the average US household uses 29.7 > kWh per day; a house wishing to go off the grid could reasonably do so in > much of the country with solar panels, some efficiency measures, and a > battery pack made with the modules of one and a half LEAF batteries." > > I for one am ready to have my own 'power company'. What's to keep > individuals from having their own home internal power supply (solar panels) > and storage system (old Leaf batteries). One could stay connected to the > grid, never adding power to the grid, but only drawing power in the off > chance that the home storage runs short? > > > > > > > > > -- > View this message in context: > http://electric-vehicle-discussion-list.413529.n4.nabble.com/EVLN-At-what-range-does-your-Leaf-no-longer-fulfill-its-purpose-tp4668969p4668970.html > Sent from the Electric Vehicle Discussion List mailing list archive at > Nabble.com. > _______________________________________________ > UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub > http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org > For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA ( > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA) > > -- Put this question to yourself: should I use everyone else to attain happiness, or should I help others gain happiness? *Dalai Lama * Tell me what it is you plan to do With your one wild and precious life? Mary Oliver, "The summer day." To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk. Thomas A. Edison<http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/t/thomasaed125362.html> A public-opinion poll is no substitute for thought. *Warren Buffet* Michael E. Ross (919) 550-2430 Land (919) 576-0824 <https://www.google.com/voice/b/0?pli=1#phones> Google Phone (919) 631-1451 Cell (919) 513-0418 Desk [email protected] <[email protected]> -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.evdl.org/private.cgi/ev-evdl.org/attachments/20140417/388862cc/attachment.htm> _______________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org For EV drag racing discussion, please use NEDRA (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NEDRA)
