Apr 27, 2015 12:53 pm
Re: Been reading and thinking but can't seem to find an answer
Yup, yup and yup. I completely understand what you are saying and my research to date supports accordingly.
I've got a unique situation in that, I work from home and use the majority of the KWh's (20) during day light hours, and only 5 at night. I'd have no problem sticking up an 8000 watt PV array (or more), even aiming some west to gather what's needed later in the day if I could figure a way to be "grid zero" during the bulk of the day and pay the lousy 15 cents per KWh for the 5 I use at night. Even IF I had do buy a couple Kwh's here and there during the day .... no biggie. In other words, produce the bulk of what we need - reducing the monthly bill by 75%.
Or local utility says we can only produce what we consume, on average, for the day and uses the past year's energy consumption as the basis for sizing the system, and even at that, I'll still be paying the customer fee of $6, nuclear decommissioning fees, and whatever else they decide to stick on here and there so I'll never completely devoid of an electric bill.
My line of thinking goes like this : I'd rather stick up a few thousand watts more in PV (getting cheaper by the day) and say the hell with net metering. I know, I'd miss all the fun of the electrical inspector, the local utility's yearly reviews, all the bureaucratic red tape that goes along with it, but somehow I think I could survive
But that's just my anarchist way of thinking...