I am going solar

Wow. You guys are great on power use. We just got our annual bill of $4XX.XX for the year's electricity. Our one year use before solar was $36XX.XX if I remember correctly.

 

Hopefully they'll come and install the meter sooner than two weeks! Since electricity is pretty reliable service I would think that their service crews don't have much to do, barring some kind of natural disaster.

 

Ah, for us in SoCal, it's the opposite. We have a lot of clear winter days so though the period of sunlight is reduced, output doesn't fall off the chart. I'm waiting to see how on sunny hot days of summer with the A/C running (previous monthly bills $400-500) we'll do.

Most of the big savings is due to the ripoff "tiered" pricing by So Cal Edison - while "Tier 1" is "only" $.18/kWh, the allowance for Tier one is paltry and unrealistic. Then you move through the remaining three tiers (quickly) to reach Tier 4 at $.32/kWh. I figure we will only be in Tier 2 at the most, putting summer bills well under $100/mo. (Of course, that offsets our saved up net bank of generated kWh.)

Wouldn't you know it, Edison is proposing reducing the number of tiers to 2. Tier 1 goes up in price, and Tier 2 is less than current Tier 3 and 4. Net effect is to reduce the value of solar generation. Bast&rds.

 

Must be different cost per KWh where you are. We don't have tiers in MA. No matter when you use electricity, it's 20 cents per KWh in winter to summer. Then half a summer to the beginning of winter it may go down to 17 cents or so. It's an odd system, but the idea is for the winter and into a good amount of spring the price goes up.

For us solar generators though, if we generate a credit, it is worth exactly that much (however much it costs). So it's to our benefit to generate a lot in Spring when it's worth more, and then perhaps gobble it up in the winter. I'm excited to get my one year's worth of generation behind me in September.

Oh yeah, LED lights really do help. We saw about a $10 decrease on average per month switching out the most used lights!

 

usb .... any pictures of the multiple meter sockets? (I think maybe your area/folk call 'em pans?). Multiple meter sockets out our way are owner's expense, and so it just wouldn't pencil out for us. Plus, the whole service panel is right in our walkway, making the area already more busy than we'd like.

 

Lioks good! Kinda cool the way the downspout curves around the conduit ... also - in the PV /backfeed box - are those lugs for holding fuses i'm guessing? If so - why not breakers?

 

Those lugs are where the production meter plugs in. A manual disconnect must be in another box nearby, accessible from outside the structure, and a breaker (or other overcurrent protection device) must be somewhere nearby also, though not necessary accessible from outside. It will commonly be on the home distribution panel on the other side of this wall.

I notice that this base includes a meter Neutral lug. My meter and base lack that.

The lugs also have 'ears' to attach bypass jumpers, so the utility can swap meters without breaking power continuity to the customer. But, apparently, it also makes theft easier. The production base I installed lacks that feature, and I believe my main home billing meter & base also lack it.

When I jumpered another meter base (on the water heater sub-circuit the lent a meter to the PV for a few weeks of 'testing' before official commissioning), I just put short pieces of 10 gauge wire into the lugs. With the circuit completely shut down at the breaker panel, of course, because a minor error here is easily lethal.

 

Since NJ loves to tax us, will the system affect your property tax value?

 

My production meter box is grounded, as everyone's should be. But where your base has 5 contact sockets (four with vertical slots, one horizontal), mine has only 4 (the vertical ones). Likewise, my meters that plug in to the base have only the 4 vertical contacts. My two white Neutral wires are bonded together and to the box just like yours, and the green Ground wires (bare wires on mine) are also bonded to the box. But unlike yours, I have no Neutral / GND connection to the plug-in meter.

 

oops - of course - brain was turned off when i missed that the meter goes there
.

 

I hate it when that happens ...

 

I just found out where people who go "solar" go to church. Op-Ed: Religion, Electric Cars & Renewable Energy

 

YIKES! You must live in a mansion! I have 13 panels on my house and I can't use all the power I'm generating. I'm sure you realize that your system will generate electricity even on cloudy days. The only thing that will shut down your system are shaded panels or the sun going down.

Don't you just love it? It's like giving the middle finger to you local power monopoly. What company did you go with?

I have been out this afternoon running errands in our PIP. It cost me nothing for gas and nothing for electricity since I have solar.