Sunday, October 31, 2010

What a Negative Electric Bill Looks lIke

This bill is pretty cool. The amount we used was less than the amount generated and exported onto the grid. Hence, a negative electric bill ($39.29 credit). We get bills like this whenever the air conditioner isn't running.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Awesome electricity bill - here in Maryland - the credit amount is not shown on the electricity bill. The electricity portion if negative does not show up on the bill until it is positive again. I think that is going to change in the very near future as they are changing the layouts of the bill.

Dave Conifer said...

Yeah, seeing it on paper is big morale booster...

Unknown said...

Dave,

Can you tell us more about your negative bill? On my electric bill I'm charged for 2 things.

1. Basic Generation (the electric) at about $0.12 per kWh
2. A Delivery Charge of about $0.05 per kWh

When you produce more electric than you use do they credit you both for generation and delivery ($0.17) or just of the generation of electric.

Then next month when you have a credit and you don't produce enough do they just add that credit against the previous bill or do they perform some calculations?

Also have you considered the time of day metering where you pay more for electric during the day and less at night? Since you make your electric during the day this could increase your credit.

Thanks for the blog it is great. My solar is coming on line in a few weeks.

DougS

Dave Conifer said...

Hi Doug,

Those are great questions and I will try to get you a better answer than this soon. I haven't really dug into the bills enough to provide any useful information. I'll work on it...

...dave

Anonymous said...

I have a 9.45KwH system and a time of day meter. I think it all comes out in the wash because we have credits running on the daytime (peak) meter during the summer months, but the credit is not applied to the off-peak usage so we always have a bill even though it's minimal. Our electric company is JCP&L. Also, I confirmed with them that if we decide to sale back credits at the end of the year (which we won't have), we would be paid a standard rate that they pay - not the peak rate. Bottom line is that the Time of Day metering doesn't appear to be making much of a difference, but we do need to make sure that we use at least 60% of our electricity during off-peak hrs in order to get the better rate. That's easy to do during the summer with solar, but it requires a drastic change to our behavior to accomplish this in the winter months. Hope this information helps.

Dave Conifer said...

That's great information and I had no clue about any of that. Thanks so much.

I'm going to add a post reminding readers to read the comment trails because so many of you know so much more than I do about all this.

Unknown said...

Thanks for the information. My system is online now, so I'll post more as I learn about my billing.

I have JCP&L as well. So your saying that instead of giving a dollar credit on the bill as Dave gets from PSE&G, you get a credit of KW hours towards your next bill. I like that better, because then you are trading in energy.

Also thanks for the insight on the time of day meter. For now I may stick with my old meter until I get some new electric car or something that uses more electric at night.

DougS