![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Free power!
Jun. 30th, 2025 07:42 pmWe just had some more solar panels stuck on our roof, since the original set is not keeping up with our demands, now that we have two electric cars and heat pumps. Last time when we got the solar panels completed, we had to wait until they were inspected before they could be turned on, and so until that happened, on sunny days we were just sad.
This set has inverters which are smart enough to know how much power they are making and to not give any to the grid, which we are not yet allowed to do. So, we get to use the power, as long as we don't push any to the grid. This is very strange, because on a sunny day it makes more than we generally use unless using the air conditioner. Usually we are pretty conservative about when we use the air conditioner. But now, as long as the sun is shining on the new panels, "it's completely free", because the excess electricity would otherwise be wasted. So we are doing things like waiting to charge the car until it's morning, so as to use the free electricity, and keeping the house cooler. This must be how people who are fully off the grid live all the time. If your battery is full, you'd better use the power in some way.
Hopefully this silliness will come to an end shortly. One inspection is scheduled for Wednesday, and then there some other thing that we hope will be fast, because we don't actually need them to replace the electric meter with a bidirectional meter; we already have one. But, they might be stupid and decide they need to replace our current meter with a different one.
Then we will go back to our normal conservative ways, where we minimize our use and push our excess to the grid where it would offset somebody else's usage and thus delay the need for a dirty peaker plant, and bank the extra for winter cost offsets. (Net metering is kind of a scam. A nice homeowner-centric scam. Thanks, MA, you did one right.)
This set has inverters which are smart enough to know how much power they are making and to not give any to the grid, which we are not yet allowed to do. So, we get to use the power, as long as we don't push any to the grid. This is very strange, because on a sunny day it makes more than we generally use unless using the air conditioner. Usually we are pretty conservative about when we use the air conditioner. But now, as long as the sun is shining on the new panels, "it's completely free", because the excess electricity would otherwise be wasted. So we are doing things like waiting to charge the car until it's morning, so as to use the free electricity, and keeping the house cooler. This must be how people who are fully off the grid live all the time. If your battery is full, you'd better use the power in some way.
Hopefully this silliness will come to an end shortly. One inspection is scheduled for Wednesday, and then there some other thing that we hope will be fast, because we don't actually need them to replace the electric meter with a bidirectional meter; we already have one. But, they might be stupid and decide they need to replace our current meter with a different one.
Then we will go back to our normal conservative ways, where we minimize our use and push our excess to the grid where it would offset somebody else's usage and thus delay the need for a dirty peaker plant, and bank the extra for winter cost offsets. (Net metering is kind of a scam. A nice homeowner-centric scam. Thanks, MA, you did one right.)
