As of tomorrow, New Jersey will no longer award SRECs based on estimates. Instead, only numbers from "revenue grade" meters will be accepted. I'm still not clear on the process. If I upgraded my meter, would I be the one reading the meter and forwarding the reading? To whom would I report it? My broker? Is that any more reliable than an estimate?
And why isn't my meter good enough to report power generation when it is deemed perfectly fine for reporting and billing me for power consumption? What's wrong with this picture?
But I did get the word from my broker that my net meter isn't good enough. With the abysmal rates that SRECs are selling for, I've decided not to invest any money in buying a new meter. Besides the cost, it would be a bureaucratic clusterF to
1) Identify a suitable meter.
2) Explain this mess to an electrician and get a price.
3) Get any needed approvals.
4) Hope my broker agrees that it's good enough (they don't seem to have a list of acceptable ones).
5+) etc.
For those of you who read this blog regularly, you know how these things work. It takes so much time just to explain questions and issues even before anybody starts trying to resolve them.
I'm disappointed about this. Loss of SREC income will shove back my payoff date even further into the future (although the plummeting value of the darn things had pretty much already done that). I feel like I've been shafted by the New Jersey Board of Utilities, who let me install a system and then decided to implement this drastic change.
The various authorities and entities have screwed this up royally. I'm feeling rather cynical about the whole thing right now.
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2 comments:
We had the srec meter installed in July. Our solar installer who is an electrician was told by an inspector at a job he was installing that they were going to switch to them for srec reporting so he might as well start intalling them. Either the inspector or the people at NJ Clean Energy told him which one to get. So he got one for us and installed it at no charge, right next to our inverters. It looks like the original electric meter with the wheel that spins and the numbers on wheels. You have to take that reading every month and report it on your account on the pjm-els.com site.
Thanks for that, LPieta. Maybe there's hope after all. I was starting to get the idea that it's a separate meter and now you've confirmed it. I'll definitely look into this. I feel better already!
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