Power bills

DSM Turbos

DSM Turbos

Well-Known Member
Joined
Feb 25, 2006
Location
Raleigh, NC
Seems that a lot of people I know are using a lot more power this year, and having pretty high bills. Duke data shows the average temps are about the same.

We are getting solar installed at the house (hopefully by end of September) since the ROI with a Duke rebate right now is around 5 years. Maybe it is just all my electronics :laughing:

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I noticed the same thing on ours. 142KwH more this year in July than last year's billing cycle. Both show 80* avg temp. Variables would be me not working from home last July and I realized just the other day the timers on our Tstats had been reset from when we had the units serviced a few weeks ago so I was probably running AC more on the weekends when we aren't here.
 
Nothing has changed for us regarding when/what is consuming... BUT the "average temp"s aren't exactly accounting for the 2Q2024 90*+ temps we saw.
Bills (house & shop) are definitely up about 30%-ish
 
Did the cost per kWh go up? Seems like there’d been talk of a rate increase.
 
Did the cost per kWh go up? Seems like there’d been talk of a rate increase.

Oh yeah for sure. Part of what makes solar a little more attractive also, I think these are the ones that effect me.

DEP was granted an increase of 6.8% on October 1, 2023, an additional 3.4% increase that will become effective on October 1, 2024, and a further 3.7% increase that will become effective on October 1, 2025.
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DEC was granted an increase of 8.0% on January 15, 2024, an additional 3.5% increase that will become effective on January 15, 2025, and a further 3.2% increase that will become effective on January 15, 2026.
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Additionally, a new rider went into effect on January 1, 2024, amounting to an additional $1.57 per one-thousand kilowatt hours charge. That rider is called the Customer Affordability Rider (CAR), and it assists those who qualify for assistance from the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services with their power bills because their income falls well below the federal poverty level.
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And I think they are asking for more again.
 
You just created this thread to make me angry, didn’t you? :laughing: :mad:

Edited to add: Our bill is way up, even when you account for the electric car usage. I have spent more days working from home compared to this time last year. My son is playing WAY more PlayStation. That’s probably it…the PlayStation.
 
DSM Turbos said:
Did the cost per kWh go up? Seems like there’d been talk of a rate increase.

Oh yeah for sure. Part of what makes solar a little more attractive also, I think these are the ones that effect me.





And I think they are asking for more again.
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I'm not a fanboi of solar, but one thing people don't really talk about is that the price of grid electrical is never going to get cheaper, only go up. This makes the up-front investment not only a hedge against today's rates but whats going to happen with inflation and inevitable rate hikes and everything else.
I'm curious @DSM Turbos does your 5 year payoff include this as part of the math?
 
Andy J. said:
You just created this thread to make me angry, didn’t you? :laughing: :mad:

Edited to add: Our bill is way up, even when you account for the electric car usage. I have spent more days working from home compared to this time last year. My son is playing WAY more PlayStation. That’s probably it…the PlayStation.
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Freaking liberal and your damn electric car.
 
Things folks do not realize or know about residential grid-tie solar:
1. Unless you have a special inverter with a convenience outlet you have no way to generate power anything if the utility is out of service (eg cannot be used as a backup power source.)
2. If you do not time the panel install with a new roof plan to pay a lot of money to remove and re-install the panels in a few years when you need a new roof.
3. The inverters are not lifetime devices; the electronics fail, the caps fail, the IGBTs fail, and by 10 years the unit is half-a-decade obsolete with no replacement parts so plan to replace by then. Industry-wise these are relatively mature products so unless some fantastic new innovation comes along do not expect them to be much cheaper come time for replacement.
4. The panels on the roof degrade over time so the best you will ever get is when they are brand new and by about 20 years they need to be replaced if they manage to escape damage from hail storms. At best you might get 80% output (at max irradiance) at year 20. They start to degrade the day they are put in service.
5. The panel industry had a sudden and drastic shift away from US domestic and European manufacturing (Germany, specifically) to China over half a decade ago. They have next to ZERO regard for the environment and panel manufacturing involves all sorts of nasty chemicals. This is why the "price of solar" has come down; simply due to lack of regulations to safeguard the environment and people and thus the costs are lower. Inverter manufacturing (specifically, Huawei) bloomed in China over the last decade as the commercial industry moved away from central inverter designs and to string designs which in concept are very similar to residential grid-tie inverters. SMA and a couple others used to be the powerhouses in this market but the cheap Chinese knockoffs took over. So while it may look "cheaper" on paper the cost to the environment and the world is probably higher.
6. Placement of the panels is vital. Many houses are not great candidates for solar due to roof orientation, obstructions from other homes/building, and shading from vegetation. I see it all the time, especially in lower-income areas, where predatory solar companies have put panels on the "south facing" roof staring right at a line of trees that are close to, and far taller than, the home. It is already difficult enough to obtain good irradiance and high output with fixed panels but this is just terrible. Even at its best most installations do not live up to the potential of the equipment so then to get enough power you have to add more panels which drives up first cost and installation costs.

Your mileage may vary but in all the math I have done over the years power needed to cost around $0.40/kWh to have a reasonable "payback" and get some return on investment before it is time to replace components of the system and start the math over. The folks selling this stuff will never show all the math because in our region of the country it generally does not "pay" to put solar on the roof.

All this reminds me to go run the monthly load test on my natural gas standby generator...
 
Got me curious, so went and looked at my usage. 3000sf, one level. Two reptilian humans in the house, we keep a/c set to 77.

Central Electric Membership Corporation Average rate 12c/kwh summer. Our highest bill is almost always for January usage, around $200.

cemc.jpg
 
Duke Energy decided to start screwing everyone this year so they sought approval (and won it) to start charging all sorts of BS fees on top of the now ~$0.11/kWh rate they were already charging. My bills popped up around $35 per month after they instituted the changes. They tell a BS story that they were charging the fees inside their rates and now it is fully disclosed but my power consumption is relatively predictable and repeatable but my bills are definitely much higher every month than they ever used to be. The only thing that changed were all their stupid fees.
 
RatLabGuy said:
I'm not a fanboi of solar, but one thing people don't really talk about is that the price of grid electrical is never going to get cheaper, only go up. This makes the up-front investment not only a hedge against today's rates but whats going to happen with inflation and inevitable rate hikes and everything else.
I'm curious @DSM Turbos does your 5 year payoff include this as part of the math?
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Mac5005 said:
How many watts in solar and what’s the upfront cost?

I want to see the real world #s that aren’t marketing and sales bullshit and when is the break even point.
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Needed to get out of meetings to go more in depth, @OnlyOneDR will answer some of what you brought up also.

My roof is about 2 years old so I'm good there.

Duke energy currently has a rebate for battery + solar. $30,900 total for the system, then federal tax rebate of 30% which is 9,270, and a Duke Rebate of 9k, so out of pocket is 12,630.
Duke rebate - https://www.duke-energy.com/home/products/powerpair basically they are making you a mini power plant, and give you $52 dollars a month of bill credit, to pull from your power wall between 30-36 times a year. To fill the power wall back up its around 11.5 kW so thats is less 2 bucks worth of electricity at current rates.

My setup will be 11.18 kW DC of solar with a Tesla Powerwall 3

If there wasn't this rebate from Duke, the payback is like 10-12 years, which isn't worth it to me.
Battery & inverter are 10 year warranty
Panels are 25 year and guarantees at least 90.58% of nominal power up to 25 years.
I'm lucky I have an East to west roof (mostly) that has very little shade (if really any of it during the year) so solar output should be good.
Estimate at 13,258 kwh per year, guaranteed within 15% of that number by them.

My yearly average bill before for the past 12 months (in June when I did the calc was 180 per month)
My calculations that I built used a 3% average increase in cost per year, and used math that overall 70% of my power would come from solar, because you will have some good months and some not so good. You don't want to build solar to have more panels then you really need, because selling back power to the grid is pennies on the dollar for your investment. My payback was right 5-6 years with my conservative estimate (at least what I thought was conservative). I could be wrong, this is where solar is really hard, they will give you wild payback numbers, and it is very hard to figure out what it really will be.
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Since I'm going battery I can produce while the grid is down, which is a big plus for us being on a well. You won't really be able to run AC though since the battery will suck dry quick during that, but if you have strong sun you should be ok, but that isn't why I'm getting it. I'm okay if it don't get the full payback I'm thinking as quick as I expect, because also having power and water will also be great when stuff does go down.
 
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DSM Turbos said:
Since I'm going battery I can produce while the grid is down, which is a big plus for us being on a well. You won't really be able to run AC though since the battery will suck dry quick during that, but if you have strong sun you should be ok, but that isn't why I'm getting it. I'm okay if it don't get the full payback I'm thinking as quick as I expect, because also having power and water will also be great when stuff does go down.
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This is the ONLY reason I would even consider it.
 
I found out the hard way that the rate for my shop in the backyard is 4x the house. I keep my campers plugged up but usually to the house. Never noticed much. Had them hooked to the shop and got a 100$ extra bill. My garage out back is on a separate meter and considered commercial since it’s not a residential. Scammers they are!
 
DSM Turbos said:
Needed to get out of meetings to go more in depth, @OnlyOneDR will answer some of what you brought up also.

My roof is about 2 years old so I'm good there.

Duke energy currently has a rebate for battery + solar. $30,900 total for the system, then federal tax rebate of 30% which is 9,270, and a Duke Rebate of 9k, so out of pocket is 12,630.
Duke rebate - https://www.duke-energy.com/home/products/powerpair basically they are making you a mini power plant, and give you $52 dollars a month of bill credit, to pull from your power wall between 30-36 times a year. To fill the power wall back up its around 11.5 kW so thats is less 2 bucks worth of electricity at current rates.

My setup will be 11.18 kW DC of solar with a Tesla Powerwall 3

If there wasn't this rebate from Duke, the payback is like 10-12 years, which isn't worth it to me.
Battery & inverter are 10 year warranty
Panels are 25 year and guarantees at least 90.58% of nominal power up to 25 years.
I'm lucky I have an East to west roof (mostly) that has very little shade (if really any of it during the year) so solar output should be good.
Estimate at 13,258 kwh per year, guaranteed within 15% of that number by them.

My yearly average bill before for the past 12 months (in June when I did the calc was 180 per month)
My calculations that I built used a 3% average increase in cost per year, and used math that overall 70% of my power would come from solar, because you will have some good months and some not so good. You don't want to build solar to have more panels then you really need, because selling back power to the grid is pennies on the dollar for your investment. My payback was right 5-6 years with my conservative estimate (at least what I thought was conservative). I could be wrong, this is where solar is really hard, they will give you wild payback numbers, and it is very hard to figure out what it really will be.
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Since I'm going battery I can produce while the grid is down, which is a big plus for us being on a well. You won't really be able to run AC though since the battery will suck dry quick during that, but if you have strong sun you should be ok, but that isn't why I'm getting it. I'm okay if it don't get the full payback I'm thinking as quick as I expect, because also having power and water will also be great when stuff does go down.
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Which solar company did you go with?
 
awheelterd said:
Which solar company did you go with?
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8m solar.
They were the ONLY company we talked to that actually wanted to see our panel before quoting it. Good thing to because we actually have 2 200amp panels and a power wall can only back up a single panel (without some odd work around). We are moving a couple of loads off the 2nd panel like our well pump so it back be backed up.

Also some places tried to tell me a 3 year roi and I showed them my math and they were like yeah that’s true I guess. They got crossed off the list
 
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shawn said:
Can you share? I've been looking at DIY solar, but I don't like the ROI.
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Take a look few posts up for my screen shot.
My math did 70% of power bill covered by solar (I average 180 a month), 3% yearly utility increase.
The ROI is hard unless there is additional rebates (although I am not sure what the install cost you would save would be). Let me know what else you might want for data.


This is the BS one of them fed me (if you are financing you can't get 3.75% now, his math for the battery is 10 years, who knows if you will still live there in 10 years and he counts all that money up front instead of monthly, among other flaws in his math)

Initial Investment - $31,046
30% Federal Tax Credit - ($9,314)
Duke Rebate - ($9,000)
Battery Control Incentive - ($6,240) - ($52/mo over 10 years)
Net Investment $6,492

Your payback would be about 4.3 years not accounting for the increase in home value which is about 4%
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DSM Turbos said:
Your payback would be about 4.3 years not accounting for the increase in home value which is about 4%
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That increase in home value is only valid if the system is fresh and functional. Once the system is dated and not working at full capacity and needing repair, its a liability.
 
jeepinmatt said:
That increase in home value is only valid if the system is fresh and functional. Once the system is dated and not working at full capacity and needing repair, its a liability.
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100% agree, its a bs number also. I asked a few agents and they said ehh doesn't really add value too much except maybe to the right person also.
Good thing is a new owner could just turn the system off and it costs them nothing.
 
DSM Turbos said:
100% agree, its a bs number also. I asked a few agents and they said ehh doesn't really add value too much except maybe to the right person also.
Good thing is a new owner could just turn the system off and it costs them nothing.
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Until the roof starts leaking or the house catches on fire ;) (I'm just playing devils advocate here)
 
jeepinmatt said:
Until the roof starts leaking or the house catches on fire ;) (I'm just playing devils advocate here)
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Read an article a while back about Florida home resales were being hurt due to panels and the liens on the homes. Of course they were 40/50k Liens and tipping the appraisal. But the article also was showing how the aggressive sales teams were getting people above their heads.
 
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