Solar Powered

I briefly mentioned in my last post I installed solar for my house. I actually signed the contract almost a year before I got it installed, but needed to wait to deal with financing. I needed to refinance my house first, and that took awhile to get my ducks in a row. Once the financing was in order, nearly a year had gone by. This had two important benefits. First, by signing when we did, we qualified for a much higher rebate from Edison (the state, really) that we would of had we waited. Furthermore, prices on the solar panels dropped during that year.

Since I already had a signed contract, my contractor, Swan Solar, didn't want to rework the numbers, because then we would have a new contract and I would get the much lower rebate. So instead, they just gave me more panels and kept the contract the same. So instead of 21 panels, I got 28. These guys really took care of me.

My solar system is grid tied. This means during the day, I send power out to the electric company, and then at night, I am drawing power from the grid. That way I don't need batteries or other form of power storage. Unfortunately, it also means when the grid is down, so am I. I need a completely different inverter if I want to run off the grid entirely. It also means I have an electric bill.

Due to the tiered nature of electric billing, it is not really cost effective to completely eliminate your electric bill. For low usage, electricity is so cheap, it works out in your favor to have a bill. So, we targeted having under $50 electric bill per month once my solar system was installed. Unfortunately, that was all planned before I decided to buy my electric car, so the significant extra electric usage from the electric car would add to my usage. Fortunately, we overbuilt the system. Net result: electric bills in the $1-$2 range.

It's nice having such a low bill. On the down side, it pretty much negates the threat to make my son pay the electric bill if he doesn't turn off the lights in his room.