TOU impact

I decided to do one more check. When they switched my meter, they switched me to TOU (time of use) pricing, rather than the fixed pricing I was on before. Turns out, this was a big help. I saved an additional $35 on this plan over what I would have saved had I stuck to the fixed pricing.

First bill

I received my first PG&E bill since installing the solar this week. Unfortunately, PG&E assumes when you go to solar, you don't want to do any analysis, so they send you a simplified bill. The bill didn't have the details I was looking for in order to see what my savings are. I called up the solar customer service at PG&E (the normal customer service is no longer able to help me) and found that the information I wanted was on page 4 of the bill, and they normal only send pages 1 and 2. They were able to flag my account to receive the detail bill from now on though.

Now that I have the full bill, I am able to see that I used 1389 KWh of power from PG&E for the 27 days that the bill covered. My solar system generated just over 547 KWh of power for the same period, putting total usage at 1936 KWh. Unfortunately, on March 1, PG&E changed rates further complicating the cost analysis, but with some help from Excel, I was able to do some calculations.

First, the big positive is that I stayed in the Tier 3 pricing, using less than 200% of baseline. This kept me from paying for the highest cost power. Without the solar, I would have been well into Tier 4 pricing. Each KWh in Tier 4 is 4 cents more than in Tier 3 (and Tier 3 is more than double Tier 2 pricing, adding 15 cents per KWh to the price). In order to calculate my savings, I added the solar generation to the appropriate tiers. My Tier 4 usage alone would have cost ~$128, but solar was able to completely eliminate that. I was able to reduce Tier 3 usage by another ~$45, putting the total savings for the month at $173.

These numbers are approximate, since I am unable to figure out how much of the power I used from solar was used during the partial peak prices (1-7pm weekdays) vs off-peak (all other times). PG&E allocates baselines based on % of power used at each of the rate periods (I used about 10% of my power during the partial peak period, so my baseline quantity for partial peak pricing was 2.86 KWh a day, rather than the 7 KWh a day it would have been had they done it based on % of the day spent in each rate category). Therefore, I made the assumption that all of the solar would have been used during the more expensive Partial Peak time-frame, rather than the cheaper off peak. This means my saving estimate is probably a little high, but the best I could do.

I did run the numbers, and found that the way PG&E does the allocation of the baseline actually works out in my favor this month, since I would not have used enough power to hit the full Tier 2 limits had the allocation been done on a percentage of time basis, so I would have had more Tier 3 usage in off-peak. The savings was right around $5.

Bottom line, the solar system saved me from paying PG&E around $173 this month, and cost my $0, since my first year of solar power is free. If I was paying for the solar power, it would have cost around $120, putting my net savings this month at $53.

The first 11 days

I can now track the performance of my solar system from my desk. It is surprising how often I have found myself checking to see how it was doing. Since I sit in a cube with no view of the windows at work, I can now tell what the weather is without standing up just by seeing how much power I am generating at the time.

Of the first 11 days I have had the system, it has been relatively sunny 9 of those days. We did have 2 days of rain last week, and I was surprised that I still was generating power on those days (although significantly less than on sunny days. In the first 11 complete days, the system generated 211.6 KWh of power, an average of over 19 KWh a day. That jumps to 22.5 KWh a day when the 2 rainy days were excluded.

My typical consumption last month was around 70 KWh a day. Baseline for my zone in PG&E land is 28.6 KWh a day during the winter months. So, the solar system is not dropping me all the way down to Tier 2 (up to 130% of baseline), but it does get me down below the cutoff for tier 3 (200% of baseline). Of course, right now I am really only generating power between 7:30am and around 4:30pm. In a few months, I should get a good 2 more hours of generation time, which would give me another 10-12 KWh of power a day.

I can't calculate the savings until I get my first PG&E bill, but this is the first time I can say I am looking forward to seeing a bill.

On the grid

I received an e-mail on 2/14 from PG&E confirming that they had received all the required paperwork from Real Goods. When I had talked to them a few weeks ago, they had said it would take from 10-30 business days from when they received the paperwork until they could come to the house and swap the meters.

I guess they were wrong. Yesterday, I happened to be working from home for an unrelated reason. The doorbell rang, and I was shocked that it was PG&E! They were here to install the meter. It took all of 30 minutes, about 2 minutes of which was time with the power to the house off. I was in the middle of a meeting while this happened, so I had to switch to our backup wired phone (yep, still have one of those in the house), and then it was done. When the meeting ended around 4:30, I was able to see the paperwork the tech had left. I now am switched to E-6 Time of Use net energy metering. When I went out to look at the shiny new meter, there was a couple of things that stood out.

First, it has a sticker on it that says "Meter runs both directions". That is what I have been waiting for. The second thing was a tag attached to the meter with a label that explicitly grants me permission from PG&E to turn on the solar panels and hook them to the grid. So, I reached up to the inverter box and turned the dial to ON. I was rewarded a few seconds later with a green light. Unfortunately, it was nearly 5pm by this time, so there wasn't much light left to generate power, but I am officially generating power.

I was hoping to be able to check how much power I was generating, but I am still waiting for the information from Real Goods on how to do this remotely. I will check the readout on the inverter box itself when I get home tonight, but in the near future, I should be able to do this from my computer.

So, if you had 2/23/12 as the day my solar would be working, you win the prize. Now to see how much power it generates, and what my savings are. Stay tuned.

Another delay

Since the county signed off on the permit, I thought the system was ready to start working. All that was left was for PG&E to swap out the meter on my house for one that could run backwards, and to connect the 2 systems. I was told that PG&E typically takes 3-4 weeks to do this. So, after waiting 2 weeks and hearing nothing from PG&E, I decided to give them a call to see when the connection would happen. That is when I got my next surprise. PG&E never received the request from the solar company to do the connection. Once they do, they have 30 business days to do the hook up, but their goal is 10 days.

So, my next phone call was to Real Goods Solar to find out what the hold up was in getting the paperwork to PG&E. I know all the paperwork PG&E required was ready, since the helpful agent at PG&E had pointed me to a list on their website, and I had received a packet from Real Goods that had my copies of all the documents. Apparently, the finance company that Real Goods used for my transaction hadn't signed off on it yet. I am not sure why this is a holdup, as PG&E doesn't require anything from the finance company to do the hookup. The agent at Real Goods said it was in process and should be taken care of this week. I sure hope so, since the system is doing nothing sitting on my roof not hooked up to the meter.

What upsets me the most is that once again there was no communication from them on an issue. The last contact I had from them was the day of the inspection, when the rep said all he had to do was go back to the office and send the paperwork in to PG&E, and then it was all in their hands to get it turned on. Obviously, that wasn't true. And two weeks later, i is still not true. If I had not called to find out when the next step would happen, I would not even be aware of the issue.

I guess we will see if the paper work gets to PG&E next week.

Inspection completed

The next step in getting the solar system operational was completed today. The county came and signed off on the final inspection. It was a bit anti-climatic, as the inspector was at the house for all of 10 minutes. Real Good Solar sent a rep out to the house to meet with the inspector and make sure everything was good. I feel a bit sorry for him, since he had to drive 3 hours each way for something that took 10 minutes. Although, he did hook up the internet monitoring to the system while he was at the house. Unfortunately, the system is not using WiFi to connect to my internet access point. Instead, it uses some other wireless technology to transmit to a receiver that then is plugged in through an Ethernet connection to my router. This wireless receiver needs to be plugged in to the wall as well. Should I subtract out the power needed for this from what the system generates?

A little more drama

Today, the install of my new solar system started. However, it almost didn't happen. On Friday, I received an e-mail from the sales rep at Real Goods solar asking me to call him. I thought it was just a reminder about the Monday install. No such luck.

Apparently, the shade readings that I was told were a resolved problem, were not resolved. Rather than the 95% sun the contract specified, my roof would only be getting 90% sun. This means that the panels will generate about 8% less electricity then planned. The sales rep said that he had been too aggressive trying to get me a good price. The next question I had was what does this mean to me.

The short answer is that the panels would now only save me $60-$70 a month, rather than the $90-$100 I had expected. My monthly payment for the panels would stay the same, but since they generate less electricity, the effective rate for the power would go from 22.7 cents a KWh to about 28 cents a KWh. Needless to say, I wasn't happy. I felt that the new numbers were not advantageous enough to me to justify going solar.

The salesman offered several other options, none of which were acceptable to me. I let him know I was not happy. Letting me know of an issue the business day before the install for the second time was not acceptable. Especially since I was told the issue was resolved 2 weeks ago, and I had heard nothing from them since.

Two hours later (it was now almost 3pm on Friday), I got a call from the sales manager. He asked for an opportunity to fix it. About an hour later, he told me he had gotten approval to lower the price of the system to where I was now paying 23 cents a KWh. The system would still produce 8% less then before, but now I would pay less per month in order to maintain the price per KWh at close to what it was supposed to be.

I agreed, with the proviso that I wanted the install to go ahead on Monday. I had already made plans to handle my meetings on the phone from home, and didn't want to change plans at the last minute. He agreed, and had the new pages of the contract e-mailed to me so I could sign them and e-mail them back over the weekend.

Today, at around 10:30, the installers showed up. They installed the brackets that will hold the panels and the inverter. Tomorrow, they are supposed to finish. The installers will be back at around 9:30 in the morning (they are coming from about 3 hours away, so I guess I can't complain about the late start).