Comment on Should I call them and see if they'll make my bill bigger LMAO
dan@upvote.au 3 days agoSolar panels are worth it in California (or, they used to be before NEM3 went into place). I’m in norcal and had 11.2kW of solar panels installed after buying a house. I estimated it’d take 5 years to break even, but the electricity prices have gone up quite a bit since then, so the break even point keeps getting closer and closer.
bobs_monkey@lemmy.zip 3 days ago
NEM3?
dan@upvote.au 3 days ago
It has to do with what happens with excess solar power you produce.
Before NEM 3.0 rolled out, there was 1:1 net metering. If your electricity price wws $0.50/kWh (for example) and your solar system produced an extra 10kWh that you didn’t use during the day (meaning it was exported to the grid), you’d get a $5 credit that would offset power usage when the sun isn’t out, like at night.
NEM 3.0 changed how the value of exports is calculated. You may pay 50 cents per kWh for power you import but might only receive 3 cents per kWh for power you export. This means it doesn’t make sense to get a solar system without a battery in California now, and batteries are expensive.
People that got solar before April 2023 are grandfathered in to NEM 2.0 for 20 years, but the power companies are doing all they can to try and break those contracts, including reducing the price per kWh and instead having a large monthly fee just to be connected to the grid. They want to extract as much value as possible from customers with solar, as they’re not making enough money from them.
thecleanenergyalliance.org/clean-energy-alliance-…
bobs_monkey@lemmy.zip 3 days ago
Ah gotcha. Our local utility went away from net metering a few years back due to revenue losses, so while solar is mandated for new builds, the customer isn’t getting the benefit of overproduction. Like you said, it’s almost wasteful to not have a battery system installed, but then again, costs are costs.