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The anniversary of my solar electric installation was January 8. I expected a grand reconciliation statement from PG&E, but it never came. I was actually looking forward to my PG&E bill.
Turns out it came in December, and I paid it without even noticing. The bill amount was $6.53.
It’s not entirely accurate to say that my entire year’s worth of electricity cost me less than seven bucks. PG&E bills solar customers about $6 every month, regardless of usage; it’s a service charge of some sort. So I actually paid $63.31 in fees over the course of the year.
At each solar customers’ anniversary, folks who are “net consumers” — meaning, they drew more watts from the grid than they provided to the grid, over the year — get the sum of those monthly fees applied to whatever their power costs are.
“Net producers,” the folks who generated more power than they used over the past year, get nothing. That is, they pay the (approximately) $6 fee every month, but they don’t get it back. It’s PG&E’s way of saying “I love you,” or maybe it’s their way of saying “we’re sort of a monopoly; just deal with it.” (There is such a thing as a free lunch — it’s served at 245 Market Street, San Francisco.)
So, the best thing I can hope for, no matter how much power I generate, is to not have to write a check to PG&E every December. In 2004 I had to write a check for $6.53. That’s pretty great considering our shading problem and the arrival of our son, who does a lot of laundry for only being a couple weeks old.
Following is a chart of my running PG&E account balance from 2004. Negative numbers indicate a credit.
| Date | Unbilled Charges | |
| 2004-01-20 | 12.28 | |
| 2004-02-20 | 35.73 | |
| 2004-03-23 | 46.10 | |
| 2004-04-21 | 51.80 | |
| 2004-05-20 | 38.82 | |
| 2004-06-22 | 22.07 | |
| 2004-07-22 | -4.15 | |
| 2004-08-21 | -24.72 | |
| 2004-09-22 | -35.98 | |
| 2004-10-21 | -24.13 | |
| 2004-11-20 | -2.79 | |
| 2004-12-20 | 6.53 |
I’d like to calculate the amount of money I saved — that is, the amount I didn’t have to pay for power in 2004. But I’d need an advanced degree in Obfuscational Accountancy to make sense of all the fees and legislated reductions and over-baseline penalties. The closest I can come without herniating my brain is to look at the previous year’s costs.
In 2003 I spent $890 for electricity. Rates have gone up more than once since then. Therefore I’d guess we saved $950-$1000 during the first year with our photovoltaic system.
