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How does a public utility make money otherwise?

Thieving SOBs!

Our solar system has paid for itself many times over after about 10 years. Since we upgraded to another 18 panels, we been just about even with excess production in the summer offsetting electric bills in the winter. The huge difference is that with Net Metering 1.0, I got the lowest tier rate as a credit on the bill and had a minimal fee of $10.35 to be a customer.

The new customer price for solar users will be $8/kWp or $96/mo, a difference of $1,001 per year versus the current $10.35 or $124.20/year.

Even though I give more power than we use, the new rate for excess in a month is a wholesale rate or 5 cents instead of the current lowest tier price of 29 cents. In the summer, my extra 500kWh/month gives me a credit of $145. The new rate would be 5 cents or $25, a loss of $120 that I could offset in the winter bill, that's an 82.7% gift to the utility. Last year, I gave SDG&E 3,841 kWh in about 8 months, now I'll lose about $922 that I would have used to offset bills over the winter. Net, net, instead of a small bill at the end of the year, my cost would be about $2,000 a year to give SDG&E power.

The ROI on our system was about 4 to 5 years. New 4.2 kWp systems will cost roughly $13-15K without batteries. They expect that the ROI will go up to 10 years or more. The minimum charge to be a customer will go up to about $400/year and the offsets earn you a nickel, but will cost you 29 cents or more when the sun goes down because they're pricing on time of use with 4PM-9PM being the peak rate.

A loophole might be that you'll be allowed to add panels up to 150% of your usage. Previously, it had to do with the power panel. A 200amp panel could take up to about 12.6kWp. It's a silly spec because it doesn't really mean anything as far as I've been able to find out. Maybe someone knows, we had to downgrade the breaker to get that much which makes no sense to me.

The monopoly utilities just want more profits and handouts for burning down forests and paying investors dividends.

-Rod


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  • How does a public utility make money otherwise? - Rod M 18:08:45 01/21/22 (0)

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