You solar system wouldn't work and you would be violating title 24's interconnected pathway rule.
Solar Panels for house
- Thread starter Chevelle3221
- Start date
You solar system wouldn't work and you would be violating title 24's interconnected pathway rule.
I dont know what the nem 3 minimums are only that they are higher.
Nem 2's mins are pretty reasonable. (outside of en/forced connection & limited expandability, no multi year carry over, and paying you peanuts for any over generation ) the non bypassable charges and min connect fees are 30-40 a month.
Nem 2 wasnt ideal, but it wasn't outright rape.
You wont get a permit for operation from the city if you connect a second system to the main in any way shape or form.
You could legally do something like a totally stand alone system powering a swimming pool from a gazebo roof, thats what I mean in an earlier thread by setting up microgrids.
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I know right.
When I have these conversations with people they find it almost unbelievable because they only know what they've read and as you can imagine all the downsides are rarely presented in one place for digestion.
The next set of conversations is usually centered around " what ifs" - and sadly the man has this thing locked down 6 ways to Sunday.
Here's my current electricity bill. Lot's more than juice... Oh yeah, PG&E is a monopoly in my hood. I do love that big nuclear reactor up in the sky, with 330+ days of sunshine!
That's exactly what I was talking about. If you really insist, you CAN stick it to the man without connecting to the grid, just have a dual system of 2 small AC, 2 EV, 1 giant tank of heat pump water heater, swimming pool full of tubes to warm up during the day and warm your home at night, freezer full of ice and a tube that circulate coolant to cool down your house during duck curve hours, etc etc.
It is costly, but you will really stick it to the man and not have to sell anything to the grid, at a huge cost. Nobody can prevent you from these hacks if you really have it all figure out, but is it really worth that $30-40 a month? Is it really worth it over installing a bigger battery?
So it is a $20 or so a month mandatory charge, not too bad at all.
Here's mine, with the traditional tier rate and SVCE as our municipal, the generation credit is what PG&E would have charged and the rest would be what SVCE rate is per kwh. I don't have to deal with peak vs off peak and my rate comparator said I am within $20 regardless of which rate plan I pick per year. I don't see the point of installing solar even back in the NEM2 days, let alone NEM3.
50 cents per KWh? Yes, I would be hanging panels also.
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
The problem with all this solar stuff is that it was originally encouraged through FIT's and later NEM for people to LARP as a power plant. But you got treated far better than any power plant. You didn't have to make sure you had an adequate grid connection, you could just use the already built distribution that the utility has to maintain for you, you didn't have to worry what the market rate was, because you got some insanely generous fixed price for every kWh you produced...etc. It was trendy and cool and people with higher than average incomes were drawn to this to pay less to "the man" while virtue signal about how green they were (while raking in the green from the programs).
This in turn created another problem: the cost of all of this excess, which drove up rates, but that didn't stop the programs. Then it created the duck curve, and things got a bit more complicated. This finally led to reform after way too much capacity was installed, with "wholesale"-esque rates in the form of programs like NEM 3, which, compared to earlier programs, has people feel like they are being robbed.
So, it's an awkward discussion with folks looking at NEM 3, which is actually far closer to "reasonable" in the context of "generation the home game" than anything that came before it, because they think they are getting screwed, but that's only because of how ridiculous the schemes that came before it were, which are what screwed up the system to begin with and there are no "take backs", it's a wait-it-out game with long-duration sweetheart contracts, so the repercussions are wide-reaching and long-lasting.
This in turn created another problem: the cost of all of this excess, which drove up rates, but that didn't stop the programs. Then it created the duck curve, and things got a bit more complicated. This finally led to reform after way too much capacity was installed, with "wholesale"-esque rates in the form of programs like NEM 3, which, compared to earlier programs, has people feel like they are being robbed.
So, it's an awkward discussion with folks looking at NEM 3, which is actually far closer to "reasonable" in the context of "generation the home game" than anything that came before it, because they think they are getting screwed, but that's only because of how ridiculous the schemes that came before it were, which are what screwed up the system to begin with and there are no "take backs", it's a wait-it-out game with long-duration sweetheart contracts, so the repercussions are wide-reaching and long-lasting.
I know I posted many bills in the past.
Here in the Carolina’s with no solar panels, new efficient home. We used 40% more electricity and paid 10% less cost than you did. I think safe to say that I and others still try to wrap our heads around energy costs on the west coast.
This is for the month of May, June will be out soon
I would too but 1) my roof face north so it won't collect much sun, and 2) my roof face north and my neighbor from the south block my house so it doesn't get hot in the summer. I guess I got lucky.
I would probably hang just enough to shave off the peak but not enough to sell back to PG&E at wholesale.
You have a "base facility charge". I guess you can say that would be a different rate than us here which the first "tier" is more affordable and they are hoping that the higher tier rate would pay more and help out the rest of the program. It made sense back in the Enron days, and pre-smart-meter days.
These days they really try to push people into one of the many time of use plan so they don't have to subsidize here and gouge there. It makes more sense and more fair but knowing my family they almost always use more during the peak and not anything at all during off peak. So I decided to just stick to tier rate instead. I think the peak vs off peak here can be 53c vs 33c or something like that.
This whole solar program was developed prior to smart meter, and prior to China dumping and flooding the world with cheap solar panels. They were probably designed for panel output being 5x or 10x of natural gas so the net metering mechanism would still be "fair" to the home owners.
I don't think they anticipated smart meter to deploy so fast and panel output to cost so low / so many people install them or over build their setup. NEM3 is the actual cost to the grid.
That's fantastic, but the power company here in South Florida (FPL) will no longer allow this. Instead you'd be paying 43% of your total use, plus 100% of all fees.
My point is that the trend is unfavorable for such setups.
I recently retired and plan on a rural TN home. I may go 'off grid'. If the property is say, 80 acres or so, stringing power poles and wires to the house could cost far more than a capable solar/battery/inverter/generator setup.
If I choose to 'grid-tie' TN pays 12c per kWh.
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#1 Difficult to install on tile roofs.
#2 Not cost sensitive to the price of power.
#3 HOA's prevent them.
#4 Too expensive
#5 Builders won't add them because they don't have to.
Did you know that for the past couple of years essentially every newly built home in California comes with solar panels?
You'll need access to the grid if you ever expect to sell the house to anyone other than a cash buyer.
Is that true if the county has given you a certificate of occupancy? Bank won't write the loan? Asking - I did not know?
Will the GSE's not buy the loan?
There are a handful of lenders who would finance an off grid house but the industry has a whole requires that the house is connected to the grid. Doesn't have to be active but there must be a line to the house.
As a "cash buyer" sometimes in the past, I wouldn't touch a house with no grid electricity even if it has 3x the solar of typical day's need.
SammyChevelleTypeS3
$50 site donor 2023
In my town it is easy to look around and see where the very limited us of solar is on the very few homes. I would say we do not even have near 1% to 5% of the homes with solar. We also dont even have any wealthy ones who like to "virtue signal" with solar. The thing about the existing ones, these very few solar homes is that they ALL have the same exact thing in common. Each one of those homes is occupied by what appears to be so many people living in that one residence it looks like some commune from the late 60s!? Six to eight or more cars parked all in the driveway, street and even on their front lawns! LoL. So one has to wonder is that more than one family or two or??? just how many? Why are all those people living in these supposed to be single family residences? Myself and a few others who honestly were talking at one time to consider solar found an interesting fact. Some in the discussion are real estate or home title business owners. The next thing is if one is around the area long enough to just "watch" the situation in those homes , we all noticed the very same thing. The people living in them , in addition to having so many autos all in the yard and in front making them look like a used car lot, the residences do absolutely ZERO lawn maintenance or any type of home improvements etc... Then the most common thing we saw was those residents do not even stay living in the homes much past 2-3 months and boom, over night the homes go empty, They usually sit empty a good while with of course the (FOR RENT) sign and then one day, magically one day the solar panels are gone! One of our afternoon coffee group members did some checking into ownership of these homes. She found thay they were 99% owned by the US Dept of HUD. So, what another shocking surprise it was easy to see coming if one simply watched the houses. The government apparently are pushing or giving some contracts to certain solar companies to install those things and there can be nothing even remotely close to any ROI since the residents do not even stay in the homes long at all. This leads on to surmise that those residents may not even purchase the homes! So, the solar ends up removed and placed into dumpsters? (hauled to trash?) after not even 6 mos of use? Very sad, wasted use once again of resources ALL of us taxpayers end up footing the bills for with many of us not even aware. This is NOT meant to be political but is the sad simple truth about the very limited , wasteful use of federal money on projects that if followed up on properly could be of benefit at some point.
