First Bill....
Got my first power bill with the solar system activated...no where on the bill does it show the number of kWh generated and pushed onto the grid. Although since a part of the month was on the old meter that might change next month (the
How to read your net-meter bill web page the co-op has says it should be there). Fortunately I'd been recording these so knew how much had been generated.
The fields on the bill were the same as previous months, plus 3 new entries that are credits in
green.
- Daily System Access Charge - line maintenance fee
- Power Cost - the value of the power using the rate at which the co-op purchased it.
- Equity Charge - Co-op rate per kWh
- Energy Charge - Co-op rate per kWh > 1000 kWh
- Power Credit
- Equity Credit
- Energy Credit
- Taxes
Florida law mandates you get the same rate they charge you, but there's a big of ambiguity and it's hard to say what is and isn't included. When I plugged my numbers into their credit prices it all worked out pretty close. There should be some winter months where I generate more than I use, it'll be interesting to see if it's enough to carry forward.
Cycle the Battery?
The big question I had when looking at this is whether or not it would make sense to use the battery at night and export less power during the day. Since they track the consumed and generated (rather than net), once I go over 1000 kWh consumed I get hit with a higher rate and using the battery might help to reduce that. But it looks like the rates are such that I'd have to go way over for the $ difference to be that significant. I'll watch and if I'm wrong post on it. Just for my local co-op of course, your utility may be completely different (and probably is).