Quote:
Originally Posted by red-beard
It is when you consider that Net Metering is/has gone away. This means anything sent to the grid over what is being used, right now, get you nothing. Even in places with partial payments, anything that comes in from the grid is charged at full price. Anything that goes out to the grid is paid at the reduced rate.
SDGE is no longer paying anything for residential solar sent to the grid. If you want to zero out your electric bill, you need energy storage. There is a way to get Net Metering, but you pay through the nose for it for your regular electricty. This is for new installs.
A 10kW system with high cycle lithium batteries (7000-10000 cycles) in Houston will cost about $60K installed, which includes a NG/Propane Generator. I expect this will be $75K in SoCal. If you drop the generator, you could save about $10K.
10kW will produce around 65 kWh per day, or about 24,000 per year.
The first 750 kW on SDGE is $.19 (9000 kWh/yr)
Everything else is $0.39 (15000 kWh/yr)
Value is around $7.5K/yr - So payback for the ENTIRE system is around 10 years without incentives, or 9 without the backup generator.
If you installed this year, the Federal Incentive is 28%, which drops the payback period to about 7 or 6 years. There also might be local incentives.
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SDGE still has NEM 2.0 which pays full retail rate for exported energy. Only excess energy at the yearly true up is valued at wholesale rates, which is fine because at that point, you've paid nothing for the year so it shouldn't be a money maker.
I'm not sure what your "first 750" means? If you install solar you are required to be on TOU rates. There is a small reduction for baseline usage but the rates are still based on the time of day.
I'm also not sure how you assign the "value" of $7500/year. The only way that's possible is if someone was already paying $7500 or more a year for electric and I'm sure there might be some mansions averaging $625/month in electric but not anyone I know.
In some areas of the US back up power might be valued, but like I said, 2 outages in 15 years over 4 hours means backup power is worthless, especially calculating payback, around here.