The magic of 999999

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peakbagger

Minister of Fire
Jul 11, 2008
8,845
Northern NH
That is what my household meter read today. Prior to upgrading to my pole mount PV last June, I usually still had to buy power from the utility in January and February as I had used up my credit from the prior summer. Therefore my meter slowly crept up for a couple of years. Since last June with new capacity installed, the meter has been slowly running backwards even though I added a small freezer and used electric resistance heat occasionally. As of today my meter flipped over from 1 kW to 999999 KW. Really its just an arbitrary point but sort of like watching a car rollover its odometer, its nice to note. Bummer I missed the actual point where the number flipped.

My electric bills are amusing, the utilities billing system really doesn't deal well with net metering, they attach a graph of past usage and the degree days to compare to the prior year to the current usage, on months I generate more power then I use, the program defaults at 320 KWhr/hr average. For quite awhile I got a real letter sent by a person telling me how much credit I banked but for the last two months the computer is trying hard but still not real happy.

I am adding another 2 KW of PV in the next month or two. It will be used with a split heat pump and offset my wood usage plus provide some backup if I am not around to feed the stove. Looks like I need to keep an eye out for some electric baseboard.

With net metering and mini split heat pumps combined with cheap solar and the fed 30% rebate for solar, its starting to look like heating with PV is competitive with other sources of heating. I expect with SRECs and FITs its even more attractive.
 
As they say in German...Kool!

I predict they will charge you 999999*$0.15 = $149,999.85.
 
How did the 30% work out for you?

I did my taxes a few weeks ago and the IRS shorted me almost $4000! They only allowed about $400 refund for this year and put the remaining $4k as a "credit" toward next year! ::-)<>

It's been nice and sunny here for the last few weeks and I've been making around 15kw/hr a day on my panels. I generally use only about 400 kw/hr a month.

This is my setup: https://enlighten.enphaseenergy.com/public/systems/kqxA100729
 
The 30% credit works fine for me, I pay enough taxes to take the full credit. Folks with lower income apparently are better off with a lease as the leasing company gets the credit and in theory uses it to buy down the install cost.
 
The 30% credit works fine for me, I pay enough taxes to take the full credit. Folks with lower income apparently are better off with a lease as the leasing company gets the credit and in theory uses it to buy down the install cost.

Dunno. I made about 75k according to the IRS last year. Some write offs with the house and business, but I don't have any dependents other than the dog, 6 ducks and 17 chickens.
 
They only allowed about $400 refund for this year​
Maybe they figured a % according to the time the PV's were up and running last year.
I was thinking about getting some chickens. Not as pets though. What's been your experience.
Still think you should reaim the PVs.
 
I predict they will charge you 999999*$0.15 = $149,999.85.

That just shows what you know about electric utilities. They're only going to charge him (999,999 kW - 1 kW) * $0.15/kw = $149,999.70.

Let's not get carried away, here.
 
That just shows what you know about electric utilities. They're only going to charge him (999,999 kW - 1 kW) * $0.15/kw = $149,999.70.

Let's not get carried away, here.

I suspect they will actually charge him $0.1500010 per kWh so it will still work out.
 
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