Our solar system

[Tommy T.]

44 minutes ago, Possum said:

I just looked at our KWH annual consumption for the past 3 years. It's works out to be an average of 22kwh/day. We feed back to the power company almost as much as we buy from them but of course they don't credit us with same rate. We get 50% less than they charge. That's Meralco, others pay less. Though the ERC mandates the electric providers pay you for your excess PV power they don't say how much. 50% is actually pretty good compared to other places.

That rate or worse is fairly common among all power companies world-wide - at least that has been my experience. They pay you back the rate, or approximately the rate, that they pay to their normal providers, and then take the profit when they sell it back. You can't blame them since they must make a profit of some kind or just not exist?

[Tommy T.]

I am getting very close to installing a solar system here with cells, batteries and an inverter with automatic switching from grid to battery along with surge/loss converter.

Except recently, the U.S. stock market, and my investments, have sh*t. So I guess I will wait a while longer.

 

Edited July 26 by Tommy T.

[fillipino_wannabe]

1 hour ago, Possum said:

I just looked at our KWH annual consumption for the past 3 years. It's works out to be an average of 22kwh/day. We feed back to the power company almost as much as we buy from them but of course they don't credit us with same rate. We get 50% less than they charge. That's Meralco, others pay less. Though the ERC mandates the electric providers pay you for your excess PV power they don't say how much. 50% is actually pretty good compared to other places.

Should be more than 50%, they pay you the generation charge don't they? Normally 60-65% of the bill.

[Possum]

14 minutes ago, fillipino_wannabe said:

Should be more than 50%, they pay you the generation charge don't they? Normally 60-65% of the bill.

Import charge this month 12.82, export 7.54.

One thing that never gets mentioned when the export rate is discussed by rate setters is what a good deal it is for the utility. With solar the production is higher when there is more sunlight which coincides with the utility's highest demand time, especially here in the Philippines. They have to burn their more expensive fuel and purchase power on the spot market  which is  more expensive than what they pay to the residential PV owner to meet these high demand peaks, so they save a LOT of money.

Edited July 26 by Possum
additional info

[Mike J]

16 hours ago, Possum said:

One thing that never gets mentioned when the export rate is discussed by rate setters is what a good deal it is for the utility.

I have not seen contracts for selling back to the grid but it is my understanding that the power back creates a credit for your bill.  So if could in fact build a big credit but the power company is not going to pay you for the credit.  So you should not put in a big system and expect the power company to send you a check each month.

[hk blues]

5 hours ago, Mike J said:

I have not seen contracts for selling back to the grid but it is my understanding that the power back creates a credit for your bill.  So if could in fact build a big credit but the power company is not going to pay you for the credit.  So you should not put in a big system and expect the power company to send you a check each month.

Would this be on a bill-by-bill basis or a cumulative one i.e. would any uncredited amounts be rolled over to the next month?  I suspect bill-by-bill.

[Possum]

22 minutes ago, hk blues said:

Would this be on a bill-by-bill basis or a cumulative one i.e. would any uncredited amounts be rolled over to the next month?  I suspect bill-by-bill.

I use the term pay as credit. They roll over excess credited amounts to the next month. You'd have to have a very oversized PV system to ever have to worry about accumulating very much credit. Rainy, cloudy days  make a difference. Also the credit per KWH export and cost of import makes a difference. In 2023 our total grid supplied power was 4863KWH our grid feed in was 4462KWH with 5.5 KW of panels. Our actual bills varied from 165 to 3100 peso.

Our actual consumption from all sources was 8085KWH . Total generation was 7684kwh

Edited July 27 by Possum

[Mike J]

17 hours ago, Possum said:

I use the term pay as credit. They roll over excess credited amounts to the next month. You'd have to have a very oversized PV system to ever have to worry about accumulating very much credit. Rainy, cloudy days  make a difference. Also the credit per KWH export and cost of import makes a difference. In 2023 our total grid supplied power was 4863KWH our grid feed in was 4462KWH with 5.5 KW of panels. Our actual bills varied from 165 to 3100 peso.

Our actual consumption from all sources was 8085KWH . Total generation was 7684kwh

So you are feeding excess back to the grid, no battery, is that correct?  

[Possum]

5 hours ago, Mike J said:

So you are feeding excess back to the grid, no battery, is that correct?  

Correct. When we installed our system battery costs were too high.

[stevewool]

What do you think these folk are powering