Investing our $7500 Federal Tax Credit from our MME

Lady Anne

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With the price of fuel going up so rapidly, it’s just a matter of hours before our electricity rates take a huge hit. When we built our house several years ago we had anticipated owning an EV, so we installed a 6KW solar panel system. The system has far exceeded our expectation! So it seemed like a smart investment to expand our solar arrays by about 50%. When we built our home which is a modest 2100 feet we really didn’t know how much power we would require for the house and then with the addition of our MME we were obviously a little bit shy on our annual production. With our 8.5-9kw solar panels we will probably still be just a little low on our production. Here in Washington State we do not receive payment for our solar production, we use a net metering system. As we produce more power than we consume we receive power credits. Our net metering accumulation zeros out on April 1. If you don‘t consume all of the power that you produced thru the year you simple give it to the grid so there’s no reason to produce more power then you can consume!
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KennyPratt42

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Net metering is definitely the preferred system to be on. Before you go about adding more capacity (panels) confirm that you would stay on net metering. There are some utilities where they have limits on net metering overall and new projects are on a different billing system even though the electricity provider has some customers on net metering.

In our situation with our provider we have a rough 20 kWh system that's on net metering, but we were one of the last under their cap so if we were to change our system up or down we lose net metering. Not saying this would be the case for you, just something to double check.
 

SpaceEVDriver

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We are thrilled to have our 9.6 kW PV system with 20 kWh battery backup. We've charged almost entirely from solar (263.717 kWh charged so far).
 
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Lady Anne

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Electricity rates in this part of the country are some of the lowest in the USA. But I still think that going green as much as possible is the correct thing to do, for every kilo watt that we produce it’s that much more water that doesn’t go over the dam. I like to think of it as “Banking Electricity“!
 

AKgrampy

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With the price of fuel going up so rapidly, it’s just a matter of hours before our electricity rates take a huge hit. When we built our house several years ago we had anticipated owning an EV, so we installed a 6KW solar panel system. The system has far exceeded our expectation! So it seemed like a smart investment to expand our solar arrays by about 50%. When we built our home which is a modest 2100 feet we really didn’t know how much power we would require for the house and then with the addition of our MME we were obviously a little bit shy on our annual production. With our 8.5-9kw solar panels we will probably still be just a little low on our production. Here in Washington State we do not receive payment for our solar production, we use a net metering system. As we produce more power than we consume we receive power credits. Our net metering accumulation zeros out on April 1. If you don‘t consume all of the power that you produced thru the year you simple give it to the grid so there’s no reason to produce more power then you can consume!
Very little electricity in your area and much of the lower 48 is produced by burning oil. Mostly natural gas, solar, wind, coal, and nuclear. Some peaking units may run oil but not that much that the price of oil will impact rates that much. Now if natural gas prices go up you may see some impact to price.
 
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Lady Anne

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Akgrampy, after living in your home state for over 30 years I am very aware of what you folks pay for your utilities! One of my sons in Alaska has solar on his home and we compare our production regularly. Much to my surprise, over the year our production is fairly close. I would think that charging your MME in in Ak wouldn’t be that cost effective vs gas fill ups. Currently the price of gasoline in Washington and Alaska are very close, but the price of electricity is nearly double. Seems to me that solar would me very attractive, even though your solar production season is short it is Intense! You and I know that when the price of oil goes up, everything else followes.
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