Quote:
Originally Posted by Benched
Take it with a HUGE grain of salt:
While I was getting installed I also was trying to figure out the 'fees' portion of costs with my solar to understand the potential cost savings there. This is for residential (different fees for different types of buildings) in Calgary (other areas have different fee calculations) and I'm not an expert in the field, just sleuthed out a bit on the internet so it may or may not be accurate.
Distribution = flat $0.6479/day + $0.013033/kWh
Transmission charge = $0.042094/kWh
Local Access = 11.11% of RRO/kWh + 11.11% of your Distribution charge + 11.11% of your Transmission charge
So lowering the amount of kWh power you draw will affect the distribution charge in that you will be charged less on the $0.013033/kWh portion. (your daily is flat and no way to avoid it if you are connected to the grid/have a meter, as referenced above)
Lowering the amount of kWh power you draw will affect the transmission charge
Lowering the amount of kWh power you draw will affect the Local Access Fee because the other 2 fees are lower, so 11.11% of lower = lower. And 11.11% of less kWh drawn is lower.
Based on early results my fees since solar installed (Feb) are:
Distribution is about 3% higher (not sure why, this seems odd, maybe just high winter months ruining my averages)
Transmission is about 30% lower
Local Access is about 35% lower
VERY small sample size to be sure. Worth noting that this data is for Feb-April 22nd so I was a net consumer. Starting this billing cycle for April 22nd-May I'll be a net exporter and it may be more favorable.
So I'd say you save on fees, unknown % at this stage of the game, maybe 30-70% is a good window to guess at, over the year averaged out to 50%? (Even if you net export, you are drawing at night when you are not producing solar [unless you have batteries] so you will have draw + transmission fees.) *shrug*
Anything you sell = credits which is pretty apparent. The harder part to figure out is the part you produce and self-consume, as that is where you will save in fees by not pulling from the grid. It's also pretty subjective to each person's lifestyle and when they use power. I know people that only do laundry during the day for example, while the sun is shining and their panels are producing.
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Thanks for the real world example, it's rare to get this good data.
The part about seeing an increase on the per kWh costs when you were expecting a decrease... this is the part that never made sense to me when being pitched.
The distribution, transmission and local access service stuff are going to be doing their thing whether you're taking kWh from the grid OR putting it to the grid.
If I owned power lines, why would I charge you to deliver you power, but not take your power to someone else that is using it? In fact, I now have to manage a two-way situation on your site where I only used to have to deal with one direction. That sounds like more work and more complexity for me to manage, even in a "net zero" consumption situation.
I blew the dust off my old Zeno quote from Sep 2022 after seeing a few neighbours finally get systems put up this month. They sized a 15kW system at a cost of $44,333.56 + GST. This was projected to produce 14,103kWh, or 104% of energy offset.
Digging into my bills, we actually take about 8,120 kWh/y. Isn't 14,103 / 8,120 1.73, not 1.04? Seems like they were just trying to max out what they could've captured from the greener homes lending program. Surely enmax wouldn't have allowed that system to be permitted as quoted seeing as they have access to what they actually deliver to us.
We lay out $1,600/y in total electricity charges in a year at a fixed rate of 6.59 c/kWh (will be closer to $2,000/y when we lock in at currents offer closer to 11). $500 of that is energy only. I assumed we wouldn't be avoiding the non-energy fees if we turned our house into an effing pseudo-merchant power plant, and in fact might pay more of those to help us sell those juicy electrons.
I also assumed one might be able to buy a BESS and sell into our increasingly frequent max legal price hours which would fetch $1/kWh. But it doesn't appear you can do that. You're forced to sell at some fixed seasonal rate that's just giving Enmax or whoever is pooling your production the opportunity to capture the difference between what they pay you and that juicy legal limit.
What a messed up, garbage system we are creating. How would I ever "recover" 45k capex before the system disintegrated into smitherenes, by MAYBE reducing my costs by a few hundred dollars a year?
Asinine economics. These things are just another way to show off to your neighbourhood how much idle cash you (had) on hand.