Cost of charging

Just from figuring his bill to be about $119 a month from the above data, this probably includes the solar. This a very low bill for Long Island. I bet you that was his bill for August. I would venture to guess he has a pool so he runs a pool filter, plus A/C.

benalexe - were my guesstimates accurate?

 

doesn't Long Island have any kind of time of use billing? Many folks find TOU billing saves a boatload if you can switch your electrical usage ( like car charging - pool pumps etc) to evenings.

SGH-I717R ? 2

 

He may not fall into the prerequisites due to usage since he only consumed 717 kHw for a month:

Time-of-use rates require a special meter that records usage during peak and offpeak hours. These rates are available as an option to customers who use, or are
expected to use:
•more than 39,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) annually or
•12,600 kWh for the months of June through September

http://www.lipower.org/pdfs/account/rates_resi.pdf

 

I have a 10K solar PV system. Prior to installing it my Long Island power bill was $337 a month. Now it is $85 a month on a balanced billing. LIPA does not have peek / off peek rates for solar PV users. The reason why I am not selling back is because i use much more than I generate. Still one of the best investments I have made.

 

Are you purely grid tied, or do you have some sort of hybrid battery system?

 

Purely grid tied... a backup batter would cost too much money and not be at all worth the expense.

 

So how do you prevent yourself from selling to the grid? Lots of load in the house?That's gotta be a lot of stuff you are running.

I've got a 4.94 kW DC grid-tied system (4.31 kW AC), and during the day I'm always selling back to the grid. Our bill last month showed a net usage of 44 kWh. This month it was a whole 67 kWh. We're on Net Energry Metering and TOU metering.

 

Long Island Rates... Family of 5, Dish washer / clothes washers running all the time. Hot tub, etc. etc.

 

Ah, the hot tub will definitely do it right there. Since we use our hot tub so infrequently, it pretty much stays off unless we've got specific plans for it. That sucker easily adds $100 or more to our PG&E bill when it is running.