>> A couple years after that my 'grandfathered' status runs out and I'll be >> switched to their new >> 'solar customer' rates, at that point it will cost me over $800 a year just >> for the privilege of >> being connected to the grid. iI figure it will be cheaper to buy some used >> EV batteries and >> disconnect, which is what I plan to do. > > Of course I do not fully understand your situation. But it appears you > may have your PV paid for with the years of $.186 valued energy? The
My solar array paid for itself years ago, took a little over 5 years to break even. > $800/year surcharge overshadow the value of your production in the > netmetering. Under the new rate schedule, I will have to pay approx $60 a month in connection fees and taxes, plus they will no longer do 1:1 > stability of a grid connection is not to be taken lightly. Will the Instead, I will have to pay retail for every kwh I pull from the grid and they will pay me "export rate" for every kwh I push to the grid, this is on an instantaneous basis, not trued up annually. The Export rate is higher than what I get now (~about 5 cents currently) and the solar customer retail rate drops to 8 cents per kWh, but that still means I have to pay 3 cents per kwh to use the grid as storage. By doing some smart energy management-- only charging the EVs, running the dryer, etc. when I have surplus solar -- I could potentially keep the bill down to around $800 annually. However, I figure it will cost me around $0.50 per day to bank power, that plus the connection fees and taxes mean I will probably end up paying over $900 a year. I keep meaning to write a program to use my energy monitoring system to calculate my actual costs, just haven't gotten around to it yet. >The stability of a grid connection is not to be taken lightly. I'm already building a second off-grid EV charging station, when I disconnect from the grid I will buy a second inverter and set of batteries for my existing array, so I will have two totally redundant off-grid power setups. I also have the Volt. The ability to use it as an emergency backup power source was one of the reasons I choose it. While the Volt won't be able to support more than approx 1kw, that's enough to support my critical loads (fridge, freezer, minisplit heat pump) plus a few lights, etc. I'm also planning on buying one of the EV pickups that should be available in the next couple years. That will give me a much more capable backup power system With 3-4 independant power systems, grid stability is a non-issue. Not that the grid in my area is supper stable. We have had at least 4 minor power outages this summer and we typically have a major outage (8+ hours) once every 5 years or so. _______________________________________________ Address messages to ev@lists.evdl.org No other addresses in TO and CC fields UNSUBSCRIBE: http://www.evdl.org/help/index.html#usub ARCHIVE: http://www.evdl.org/archive/ LIST INFO: http://lists.evdl.org/listinfo.cgi/ev-evdl.org
