Copped Out and Sold for Eighty Bucks

I copped out and took my broker's offer to sell my SRECs at an astonishingly low price of eighty bucks.  It's almost like throwing money into the street, but I'm not on top of how and when these things expire so I didn't want to get stuck with zero bucks.

Can't wait for the new regs to go into effect...

It's Solar Time!

Well, the power-pigs have been turned off and we're now into the long stretch (about 8 months) where we'll produce more power than we use and have some to sell back to the power company.

The new meter isn't as hard to understand as it looks.  It has a simulated rotary dial indicator on its digital screen, so it's easy to tell at any given moment whether we're importing or exporting.  Not as cool as the spinning metal wheel, but it works.

It also indicates how much power has been imported and how much has been exported since the meter was installed.  As of a few minutes ago we've imported 1603 KWh and exported 1017 KWh since the meter was installed in late July.  That's not too bad, considering it was heavy AC season.  I'll take a guess that it'll take another week (if it stays sunny and reasonably cool) before the exports exceed imports, and it'll probably stay that way forever.

Same Old Same Old -- an O'fer on SRECs Again

I dropped the SREC floor price to $125 for all six of my SRECs and got the same result -- No sales.

Hopefully the pending legislation will solve this for people who've invested in solar and count on decent SREC income to help with payback.  I'm pretty far along and will probably reach system payoff in about sixteen months, but I have a good run at selling these things for six or seven hundred dollars.  Newer owners aren't so lucky.  At this rate there won't be a lot more 'newer owners.'

Skunked Again on SRECs

Four unsold SRECS at the August auction.  I can't even get $200 for these right now.  I guess I'll drop the floor price and get a little something for them next month.  That's better than nothing...

New Meter Working as Expected

I poked around the internet to try to learn about the net-meter meter (ours is made by General Electric).  It appears that it flashes through a few different displays.  If I read correctly, the number shown when code=100 indicates the amount of power that's been imported.  the number shown when code=101 indicates the amount of power that's been exported.

According to what I read, the blocky arrow thingy indicates whether power is being imported or exported at any given moment (equivalent to looking at the spin direction on the antique one). 

Be a Net-Meter Meter Meeter

Here's the new net meter meter.  At the bottom of the green label are the words -- wait for it -- "NET METER."   Love it...

I don't think I quite understand what the snag was, but I'm pretty sure I'm right that the root of the problem was that the installer didn't file the net meter paperwork properly (if at all).  Then, since PSE&G wasn't fully aware that we (thought we) were net meter customers, they initiated some kind of fraud investigation to figure out why our bills were, in their eyes, artificially low for no apparent reason.  This created some kind of infinite bureaucratic cyclone that wouldn't stop spinning.

To be honest, that's about as far as I want to dig into this.  We worked with some good people at PSE&G over the past few days and I think that now, all is right...

The Meter Has Landed

I'll have more details in a later post, but amazing news about our net metering problems.  They're over.  We got to deal with some extremely cool, helpful [add your superlatives here] people from PSE&G.  Bottom line -- we have a new net meter-capable meter.

How do I know it's net-meter capable?  I love this!  It actually has "Net Meter" stamped on it's face.  And it's green!

Thanks for getting it done, PSE&G...