- It's been over a year
since I installed my initial solar panels here
at the Epic Homestead
and I actually just completed installing 11 more panels.
So let's take a look back at the last year
as well as why I decided to add even more panels
to the system this year.
The first thing I wanna look at is
how much energy did I generate in a single year?
Now I installed my panels last year, 2021 on January 8th.
So what I just did is I looked back
from January 8th, 2021 to 2022, January 8th,
how much did I generate?
And on the graph here,
it looks like I generated almost exactly
8,000 kilowatt hours.
What you can see when you look at the graph
are these dramatic drops in production.
And that's just because we had a period of cloudy weather
where of course the solar energy
that's coming outta the sun is being blocked by the clouds
and so you just have lower energy
but 8,000 kilowatt hours or eight megawatts
from one full 365 day period of running the panels.
The most energy I produced in one single day
was 35.3 kilowatt hours.
Must have been a very sunny day
probably sometime in the summer
where the angle of the sun was great
and there were no clouds in the sky
and maybe I even washed the panels off
to make sure all the dust and grime was off of them.
But what we wanna look at next is
what is the cost of the energy
that I would have been spending?
So I looked at my San Diego gas and electric bills
and it looks like the electricity rates
changed a little bit at the end of last year.
So my rates are about 21.6 cents per kilowatt hour
no matter whether I'm using it on, off, or super off peak.
So I don't have any sort of curvature to my rates,
at least right now
from what I could tell from a recent bill.
So at about 21.6 cents,
if we look at my energy month to month,
I'm gonna put a little chart up here for you,
what you can see is the beginning of January in 2021
I had a very large energy bill
because I was paying for effectively December's energy
and I was aggressively running all the systems in my home
just with no regard for energy production
just to see what my true kilowatt hour usage was
if I wasn't conserving energy in any way.
So I had a $448 and 84 cent bill
on the January 3rd billing date.
But what you then see is the number just drops down
to about $10 a month.
And that is the non bypassable charge
that I'm subjected to for being connected to the grid.
So if I have no true energy cost,
the net production is higher than the net consumption,
AKA I'm generating more than I'm consuming,
then I still have to pay $10 a month
to get connected to the grid.
Non bypassable.
It is what it is.
So the lowest I could ever pay to have electricity
in general is $120 a year if you think about it that way.
Now, as you go on,
you start to see that I draw down.
So I have a negative balance
because I'm generating more than I'm producing,
this month, April the fifth.
And then it looks like August and September
as well as December I drew downwards.
And so I'm basically just accruing credits
that I can apply to energy months
where I am using more than I'm producing.
So when we look at electricity cost
for the calendar year of 2021,
I paid around a hundred-ish dollars in true energy cost
and most of that is overage from that December of 2020
when I kind of ran the bill up a little bit.
So the true, true cost is actually lower than that
but trending towards just actually zero or negative.
And when we look at usage, energy usage,
what you can see is that I'm not using,
aside from that first crazy month,
anywhere over the amount that I produce.
Every single month is negative
except for January and February.
February I used seven kilowatt hours more than I produced
but every other month, I'm either accruing, you know,
300 up to maybe touching close to 600 kilowatt hours
in the negative.
Which means I'm banking energy,
or I'm producing energy really for the grid
that you only get a credit for, at least in California,
up to the point you use.
I'm not getting paid for generating that extra energy
unless I'm actually using it
which is a little bit confusing.
It's just the net energy metering process
here in California is, is how that works.
You don't get credit for the energy that you actually make
unless you use it
and then it offsets your own bill.
But it would be nice
if we could get paid to actually produce for the grid.
I think it would incentivize a lot more people
to put residential solar on their homes,
if you knew
that because you're becoming a power generator for the grid
you're actually getting rewarded in a more substantial way.
Hopefully the law has changed sometime.
I think that'd be really interesting.
Now, let's get to why I added even more solar panels
if I'm already in the negative.
Wouldn't I just be incurring a cost
and then my payback period for solar goes up even higher?
So if you remember from my previous solar update,
my six month update,
I actually encourage you to watch that video
if you have general solar questions,
'cause the latter half of that video,
I answer a ton of them for you.
But I did do a payback period calculator
back then when I only had my initial panels
and my initial costs
and I was gonna pay myself back in about 4.89 years
which is actually pretty short.
Most solar payback's six to 10 years
because of the amount of energy I was using
and the rate of that energy,
my payback period was decreased a little bit,
which was really, really good.
I mean, five years, that's no brainer for me
as far as an investment goes.
But when we look at adding more panels,
my costs of course went up
and my production has gone up
but my consumption hasn't quite gone up yet.
So let's go ahead
and just do a really rough calculator here.
So back then, I believe I had a cost of 12,500.
The extra panels were an additional 7,500.
So now I'm at 20,000.
My cost of electricity has actually gone down just slightly.
It's been sort of smoothed out a little bit
at 21.6 cents
and then my estimated energy usage per year,
I think back then I used somewhere around 700 kilowatts
or 750 kilowatts per month.
Now I've got this pond behind me.
I've got some other things that I've built out here.
We have outdoor lighting that's here now.
So I'm actually gonna bump that up to
let's just be aggressive and say 900.
And then we're going to include the 26% federal tax credit
because that's still available for 2022.
So if I calculate my new payback period,
it looks like it pays for itself in 6.34 years.
So I added more production
actually extended my runway to start actually being
ROI positive on the investment.
But I do plan to be here for 6.34 years
and we never know
if I'm going to use even more energy than this 900.
What's nice now is because,
think about the incentive structure
of at least California solar.
You aren't rewarded for generating more than you consume.
The only way you're rewarded
is that you actually get to accrue a negative balance
that you can apply to like a future high energy month.
So if you think about what the incentives do there
it sort of incentivizes you
to use exactly as much as you consume
'cause you're not getting a benefit for it otherwise.
And so what that means here is I can optimize the home
and I can optimize the garden
not necessarily to be extremely low in energy
'cause I've basically become my own energy generator.
What I can do is I can set up the mini split ACs in my home
to turn on and off automatically
without fear of it being at high energy part of the day,
I can let this pond keep running this way.
It needs to keep running.
The pump is absolutely crucial
to the functionality of the pond
so I can't not turn it on.
But before I was thinking,
okay well maybe I could turn it off and on every other hour
so that the pump doesn't draw so much energy.
Now I know I can just let it keep on running.
All the lights in the back here,
our irrigation systems,
our cooking systems,
I can move my stove perhaps over to induction.
I don't really have to worry about energy at all.
So was this an expensive project?
For sure, I mean putting on 25 solar panels on a home
at the cost of around 18 to $20,000 before the credit
is definitely really expensive.
However, with a payback period of 6.34
in a lifetime of 20 to 25 years,
there's gonna be a significant portion of my life
that I am just generating energy for free
and I'm ahead of any sort of law
that might come in place here in California
that actually makes it really disadvantageous to own solar.
Something that was on the docket was
basically going to disincentivize solar
and kind of screw over people
who have put residential solar on their home
because basically they felt that it was too advantageous,
which is absolutely nonsense if you ask me.
It's the power companies
trying to do a little bit of a cash grab
but I'm grandfathered in now.
So I don't have to worry about that coming into play.
So all in all, I think it's been a fantastic experience.
Like I said, I used West Coast Solar
which you can see in the description here.
I think actually a couple of viewers have used them
here in San Diego.
So they've, they've been fantastic.
And it's been really, really fun to go through this process
and just know that I'm setting up the water systems,
the energy systems and hopefully the food,
both vegetable and protein
with the egg systems here at the homestead,
that it is starting to become a production house.
We are producing on this property.
We are not just consuming.
Do you have any other questions about solar?
Drop 'em down to the comments.
Till next time, good luck in the garden
and keep on growing.