My home electric bill has basically doubled in the past 4 months! WTF is going on?

[THX1138]

Don’t know about up there, but here, if you’re connected to the grid with solar, you need an interconnect agreement. Doesn’t matter if you have no intent to export.

I have solar on my garage to charge my lightning. I have two different meters, one for my house and one in my garage. So the solar is grid tied and dedicated to ev charging. The solar install company had me not power the system until the interconnect was finished. The electric company had to replace my meter with one that supported bidirectional charging. The old meter just measured current and it didn't know the difference between outbound current draw and inbound current draw. The new meter knows the difference.

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[NW Ontario Ford Lightning]

Don’t know about up there, but here, if you’re connected to the grid with solar, you need an interconnect agreement. Doesn’t matter if you have no intent to export.

No agreement required if not exporting here.
With "smart" meters they would know if you export even tiny amount of power - even accidently.

 

[WilliamRobert]

It’s the PJM interconnection capacity auction! They have all kinds of excuses for the rates going up, but my opinion is it’s old fashioned collusion to block renewables for as long as possible and to cash in before the coal and gas plants retire.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PJM_Interconnection

https://www.pa.gov/governor/newsroo...ction-against-pjm-saves-consumers-billions-ac

 

[THX1138]

No agreement required if not exporting here.
With "smart" meters they would know if you export even tiny amount of power - even accidently.

I think the meter on my garage was installed long ago, before solar net metering was a thing.

 

[NW Ontario Ford Lightning]

When they installed the "smart" meters here (2004 in the south of Ontario, 2010 in my part of NW Ontario) the main change was Time of Use (ToU) billing- allowing different rates at set times of day, to encouage load shifting to evenings ie washer/dryer after 7:00 pm resulted in some cost savings per month.
In 2019 when I first got into planning a solar installtion the ToU rates with very low overnight rates allowed the numbers to work out for me even during winter months where solar was never going to power all my loads.

To ensure I NEVER back feed the grid from my solar/battery/inverter installation, the only connection between the utility and my home battery set up is an AC-DC transformer for overnight winter battery charging.
In other words, my home is always powered by the batteries/solar, and the utility is only used to power a back up DC charger, not to directly power loads, and the utiltiy doesn't connect to my inverter at all, only to the DC charger via relay and control system.

{one exception: I have a circuit directly from the Utility panel for 48A EV charging when needed}

 

[Lightning Rod]

We finally got our solar hooked up today. Now we have to wait for the inspector to come out and inspect. We also have to wait for our electric company to come out. We are really excited!!

 

[VTHokies]

We finally got our solar hooked up today. Now we have to wait for the inspector to come out and inspect. We also have to wait for our electric company to come out. We are really excited!!

You’ll love it, I’ve had my panels for 7 years now and I haven’t had to pay an electric bill since!

 

[NW Ontario Ford Lightning]

Solar and EV's go well together...in both cases "never going back" !!

 

[Scorpio3d]

Counterpoint:

I installed solar about 10+ years ago that offset 80% of my usage. After buying an electric car, I installed a secondary system to cover 100% of my usage. The solar system covered themselves in price within 5 years due to state and federal incentives.

I ended up installing minor improvements over time to the house and now my electric bill is negative and decreasing as the rates increase.

I couldn’t make ICE more economical unless I moved to Texas and installed a personal oil well..

Yeah, we all have oil wells in our backyards here the problem is you also have to put in a refinery to make fuel.
I installed solar a few months after getting the truck and that was based on $.10 kWh rates, (I had been researching for a couple of years prior)but also realizing that the rates were going to increase because our grid was so screwed up and that was before AI went bonkers so my payback(ROI) is looking better every day!

 

[NW Ontario Ford Lightning]

it is a rewarding feeling to have a 'power plant' of my own building, at my homested, heating the buildings (heat pumps) powering my well pump, charging the Lightning.
Aside from other benefits, it is just satisfying to be self sufficient, and self reliant.

 

[Lightning Rod]

So, no one else's energy bill has skyrocketed in the past year or so?

This subject has been pretty quiet lately.

 

[22legit2quit]

So, no one else's energy bill has skyrocketed in the past year or so?

This subject has been pretty quiet lately.

Not at all, is that what you’re seeing? I’m in the south/midwest so I don’t think the local economy here would support that. The top 11 states for energy costs are blue AF (with exception of Alaska) but I’m sure most people knew that anyway.

 

[jamelski]

Nope going 2 ev home was the best thing ever. The amount of money we save every month on gas pays for itself.

just had a rental 1.5 turbo bronco sport for 2 days the same driving I do with my lightning cost about 5 bucks in electricity. I spent over 70 bucks in gas.

 

[NW Ontario Ford Lightning]

I would say my EV and 70mile/day normal driving moved my 1,000kWh per month to nearly 2,000kWh. ie confirmed, double
however as @jamelski points out, the "not-gas" driving is far far less money out of the household overall than pre EV paying for power and gasoline.

In places with low cost electricity and high cost gasoline, as long as you can charge at home overnight it is golden. Places with low overnight ToU rates makes it even cheaper.

 

[K6CCC]

No question, my electric bill has gone up - totally expected. Particularly after I retired and am no longer able to get a lot of free charging at work. Now the vast majority of my charging is at home.

With that said, my cost per mile for the first year of ownership is WAY down. Even with SoCal high electric rates, the Lightning is a little over 1/4 the cost per mile of my old truck. I was spending about $500 per month on gas and in twelve and 1/2 months, I have spent $1,750.96 for electricity.

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