I paid ~$800 for 1.2kW of solar panels on my van in 2023. The 600Ah of LFP was an additional $1,700. I’ve not paid a power bill in 2.5 years. How anyone could choose to not go solar baffles me. I was paying $3/kWh through the city-owned utility. Nominally, it was somewhere around 15 cents, but after all the fees that Austin charges, despite using only 20kWh/month, my bill was $60 at minimum.
The city has now raised rates five times since I went off-grid, so a straight $60 times 30 months undersells the ROI. It would now be $75-80, and $80 times 30 months means I’ll have broken even by May.
Less than three years, and when the power goes out in town, I’m unaware of it unless I run into a complaint on Reddit.
But no, the reason is that I live in a decently sized old house in a cold area. We’ve dual zone climate control and I’m not sure either heat pump stopped running the whole month. I do run some servers but that’s true year round and most months my power bill is in various parts of triple digits.
holy shit, mine was $15 here in Australia so that’s about 50c in US dollars (some sarcasm) AND that includes charging my ecar. i have 8.4kW of solar on the roof and I get paid a grid feed in tariff for the extra kW I don’t use. We are conscious about doing electric intensive things when the suns shining though eg oven for baking, charging the ecar and ebikes, hot water on from 11-5 only etc
I was apparently unclear about the order of operations. When I left my 1/1 apartment, I was effectively paying $3/kWh. I now pay $0. And yes, I live in my van full-time.
Everyone pays the same base fees, so despite tiered pricing, on a unit basis, it is far cheaper to power a sprawling four-bedroom house than a small apartment. The $46 dollars in fees spreads itself far better over 1,000kWh than 20.
According to the US EIA as of 2022, the average annual amount of electricity sold to a U.S. residential electric-utility customer was 10,791 kilowatt-hours (kWh), or an average of about 899 kWh per month.
you might be confusing some units, that is also total energy used by nation divided by population, not a household energy usage. If you are using 12kW constantly, you would be using 8640kwh/month, which is way more than 400x of that 20kwh/month figure.
Even at the $0.15/kwh bill, that would put an average monthly American power bill at ~$1200 which would be absurd.
I paid ~$800 for 1.2kW of solar panels on my van in 2023. The 600Ah of LFP was an additional $1,700. I’ve not paid a power bill in 2.5 years. How anyone could choose to not go solar baffles me. I was paying $3/kWh through the city-owned utility. Nominally, it was somewhere around 15 cents, but after all the fees that Austin charges, despite using only 20kWh/month, my bill was $60 at minimum.
The city has now raised rates five times since I went off-grid, so a straight $60 times 30 months undersells the ROI. It would now be $75-80, and $80 times 30 months means I’ll have broken even by May.
Less than three years, and when the power goes out in town, I’m unaware of it unless I run into a complaint on Reddit.
that is an absurdly high price for energy. I pay on average between 20 and 30 euro cent per kwh
… My power bill for February was $1900 …
Holy crap. Do you live in a bitcoin server farm? Thats insane.
I don’t disagree that it was insane!
But no, the reason is that I live in a decently sized old house in a cold area. We’ve dual zone climate control and I’m not sure either heat pump stopped running the whole month. I do run some servers but that’s true year round and most months my power bill is in various parts of triple digits.
holy shit, mine was $15 here in Australia so that’s about 50c in US dollars (some sarcasm) AND that includes charging my ecar. i have 8.4kW of solar on the roof and I get paid a grid feed in tariff for the extra kW I don’t use. We are conscious about doing electric intensive things when the suns shining though eg oven for baking, charging the ecar and ebikes, hot water on from 11-5 only etc
Just for context, are you living in your van 24/7? Just seems like wild numbers for anyone in a house to achieve.
I was apparently unclear about the order of operations. When I left my 1/1 apartment, I was effectively paying $3/kWh. I now pay $0. And yes, I live in my van full-time.
Ah, fairs.
Well in some countries solar is curbed. You are forced to sell it back to the grid at a low price.
The thought is good, because everyone benefits. In practice it’s bad because nobody wants to buy the panels.
They just changed this in my country so hopefully it will be more popular. Also government buildings are getting it all over now.
Probably, the $3/kwh is definitely not the price you get for a house.
Everyone pays the same base fees, so despite tiered pricing, on a unit basis, it is far cheaper to power a sprawling four-bedroom house than a small apartment. The $46 dollars in fees spreads itself far better over 1,000kWh than 20.
Uh, that’s really a lot.
You think using 2.2% of that is excessive?
No, watt, not kilowatt. And US is an outlier by far, with 12 kw/month. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000-watt_society
you might be confusing some units, that is also total energy used by nation divided by population, not a household energy usage. If you are using 12kW constantly, you would be using 8640kwh/month, which is way more than 400x of that 20kwh/month figure.
Even at the $0.15/kwh bill, that would put an average monthly American power bill at ~$1200 which would be absurd.