Power bills

I was looking on Duke’s website yesterday and it looks like there was a finite number of rebates available and they are all accounted for.
 
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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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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yeah no joke. On top of that - on say a $400k house, thats supposedly a $16k value. Even if you sold the house immediately somebody would have to be pretty bad at math and not done their homework to believe that. But as mentioned in 10 years its most definitely not worth anywhere close.
 
VortecJeep said:
I was looking on Duke’s website yesterday and it looks like there was a finite number of rebates available and they are all accounted for.
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That's what's happened up here. Despite the solar companies advertising that you can get a rebate they are already accounted for.
 
VortecJeep said:
I was looking on Duke’s website yesterday and it looks like there was a finite number of rebates available and they are all accounted for.
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I don't see that yet on the site, but also there are limited ones for Duke Progress and Duke Carolinas which makes it more confusing. They originally did a lottery, then opened it up on first come first serve about a month ago? We put ours in the day the first come first serve opened up. Most solar companies I talked to expected the demand to kill all rebates within 1-3 months of it opening up.

That is the only thing that swayed me for it to be worth it. My contract with them said if I don't' get the rebate, the contract is null and void.
 
DSM Turbos said:
I don't see that yet on the site, but also there are limited ones for Duke Progress and Duke Carolinas which makes it more confusing.
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Not to add to the confusion, but DEP & DEC are supposedly going to complete their merge by 2030..
 
Does this only "work" from a financial standpoint if the federal government and utility each pay for 1/3 the initial cost?

I have another spreadsheet I can share. It compared the install cost, utility price inflation, etc, against putting that money into an 8% annuity. I'd like to see if somebody can come up with more favorable numbers. Otherwise it just seems like another hobby.
 
shawn said:
Does this only "work" from a financial standpoint if the federal government and utility each pay for 1/3 the initial cost?

I have another spreadsheet I can share. It compared the install cost, utility price inflation, etc, against putting that money into an 8% annuity. I'd like to see if somebody can come up with more favorable numbers. Otherwise it just seems like another hobby.
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That's what I came up with. I couldn't get the math to math. I'm on co-op power so there is no utility subsidy. Didn't make sense for me.
 
shawn said:
Does this only "work" from a financial standpoint if the federal government and utility each pay for 1/3 the initial cost?

I have another spreadsheet I can share. It compared the install cost, utility price inflation, etc, against putting that money into an 8% annuity. I'd like to see if somebody can come up with more favorable numbers. Otherwise it just seems like another hobby.
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The math will not work if there are no subsides. But I'm going to take advantage of every tax thing I can with how much I already pay until they close this type of thing down (so many places/people/corp get a subsidy or tax break so might as well use what you can). The math before the Duke rebate didn't make sense to me.

I could add the 8% annuity, which I did think about which makes payback really hard to ever get, if you think about it that way, but then you can also think about what if you didn't buy that car, etc and saved the money instead, to me I didn't count it because of that, then consider capital gains, etc
 
shawn said:
Does this only "work" from a financial standpoint if the federal government and utility each pay for 1/3 the initial cost?

I have another spreadsheet I can share. It compared the install cost, utility price inflation, etc, against putting that money into an 8% annuity. I'd like to see if somebody can come up with more favorable numbers. Otherwise it just seems like another hobby.
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Does your 8% annuity account for loss in taxes? That's easy to overlook and can eat up to 30%.

I did a similar thing a while back and once I accounted for tax it was kind of a wash, slightly favoring the Solar but again only if you have a good rebate..
 
Is there good reliable data on what the historical and likely near-future rise is costs are likely to be outside of normal inflation?
Around here if you look at several-year-long averages it's only a slightly more, fraction of a percent. The difference is they tend to come in big jumps every few years instead of a slow creep.
 
DSM Turbos said:
could add the 8% annuity, which I did think about which makes payback really hard to ever get, if you think about it that way, but then you can also think about what if you didn't buy that car, etc and saved the money instead, to me I didn't count it because of that, then consider capital gains, etc
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No, you're talking about the opportunity cost between investing money and accepting electricity welfare.


RatLabGuy said:
That's easy to overlook and can eat up to 30%.
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You need a new tax guy
 
DSM Turbos said:
And? you don’t take advantages of any tax write offs? Just learning from uncle Donald and using all the legal ways to my advantage
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These aren't write-offs. It's white collar welfare, taking a handout from the Feds with money that we don't have. You said yourself - it's not worth putting up panels if they're not paying you to do it. That's completely different than abiding by the tax code for behavior that you're engaged in regardless of policy.
 
shawn said:
These aren't write-offs. It's white collar welfare, taking a handout from the Feds with money that we don't have. You said yourself - it's not worth putting up panels if they're not paying you to do it. That's completely different than abiding by the tax code for behavior that you're engaged in regardless of policy.
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And this is a tough thing to balance, because they’re gonna take the money and give it away anyway. Key is to vote them all out and get some folks in office who are fiscally conservative, unlike the current Republicans and Democrats.
 
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shawn said:
These aren't write-offs. It's white collar welfare, taking a handout from the Feds with money that we don't have. You said yourself - it's not worth putting up panels if they're not paying you to do it. That's completely different than abiding by the tax code for behavior that you're engaged in regardless of policy.
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there is tons of white collar welfare out there. While it’s out there and I’m paying to fund it, I’m going to take advantage of it. I pay enough taxes at least I can get something out of it this time
 
DSM Turbos said:
there is tons of white collar welfare out there. While it’s out there and I’m paying to fund it, I’m going to take advantage of it. I pay enough taxes at least I can get something out of it this time
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I want to like this because it is correct, but I also don’t “like” it. Unfortunately it’s about the only way to get back a useful fraction of the tons you’ve paid in.
 
jeepinmatt said:
Key is to vote them all out and get some folks in office who are fiscally conservative, unlike the current Republicans and Democrats.
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Lol... You still think elected officials have power.
 
shawn said:
Lol... You still think elected officials have power.
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:rolleyes:
They have enough power that <insert name of group of people that @shawn is convinced rule the world> use the elected officials to get what they want then. However you want to look at it. We can both agree they don't work for us.
 
The discourse in this thread got me looking at DIY solar again (probably been 3-4 years since I did this exercise before). Finally for about $4k I can get most of the parts and pieces to install a reasonable system around 8kW that can do the "shave" when the high AC bills come in the summer. The hurdle is that I would probably only save around $50-60/month for 5-6 months of the year which means around a 10-12 year payback. I would need to look into battery storage to get a shorter payback which is then stretched out again by the added hardware for the battery system.

Still not worth it at $0.11/kWh rates, unless someone is gifting you A LOT of money. With the rebates/credits posted above the system is about 60% paid for by others. Again if power is around $0.40/kWh it starts paying for itself which is why the "math works" in places like HI and CA.

See PG&E pricing tiers: https://www.pge.com/assets/pge/docs/account/rate-plans/residential-electric-rate-plan-pricing.pdf
Hawaiian Electric pricing: Average Price of Electricity

If we were paying prices like these in this region of the country it would "pay" to do solar. Go somewhere "up north" like NY and look up rates there, they have lower rates due to more hydro-electric power and the math is even tougher against solar: Gas & Electric Supply Prices
 
Another option to ask your electric provider is about Time of Use (TOU) rates. Several providers are either switching to TOU rates or considering switching to them. I've heard of Winter TOU (Nov-Mar) rates being 6-10am & Summer TOU (Apr-Oct) rates from 3-7pm...off-peak rates are ~30% cheaper than on-peak and if you can manage your usage/demand on-peak you can cut your bill down.
 
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