What DO you pay for electricity?

 We pay about 10 cents per kilowat hour here in western Wisconsin.  It's
just that one price, unless you are a 4 phase industrial user, as far as
I know.
  Our  bill is about $130/mo for 8 months a year and about $200 per
month for the a/c months, at worst.  And yes, I know we waste a lot.


   I keep hearing about electric bills that are WAY higher than we have.
  One of you said you "used to have  a bill of about $1000 per month"
before installing a pretty big pv system.
   If many of you are paying $1000 per month for your juice, I can see
why pv sloar is for you.  But with our usage and low bill, it would take
  a lllloooonnngggg time to pay it back, I think.

So, could a few of you who are doing serious pv tell us what you paid
for grid juice, please?

Pete Stanaitis
-----------------------

  wrote:


Hi Pete,

I don't have a PV system, but to answer your question, I currently pay
$0.1067 per kWh and my consumption comes in at just under 10,500
kWh/year.  This includes the operation of my heat pump which supplies
about 80 per cent of my total space heating needs and a dehumidifier
that runs nearly continuously six months of the year.  Back up heat
and DHW are provided by my oil-fired boiler and my dryer and cook top
are both propane.

At some point I hope to heat my DHW with a heat pump water heater;
the electricity that would normally be used to power the dehumidifier
would operate the water heater, which would accomplish both tasks and,
in turn, eliminate most of my remaining fuel oil demand.

Cheers,
Paul

 


make between Gas and Electricity.

Hi Roy,

Care to enlighten me?  And just to help you out, I don't have access
to natural gas and won't likely see it in my neighbourhood for another
ten to twenty years.  In addition, my home faces east-west, the roof
has multiple dormers (Cape Cod) and the south side is heavily shaded
by trees and a rock face.  According to Environment Canada, Halifax
averages 122 days of fog and one out of four days are deemed "sunless"
(defined as less than 5 minutes of bright sunshine), most of which
fall between the months of November and February.

Now, with that out of the way, I'm open to your suggestions.

Cheers,
Paul

 I'm not Roy, and maybe you posted to the wrong thread, but my 2 cents
anyway:
   I'm a guy looking for the same kind of answers that you are.  That's
why I'm measuring sun input at my place with the HF $199 kit.   I have
seen all manner of "cloudy" so far, and it can range from a totally zero
output  day to one that still gives me as much as 90% of max.

Do you have a Canadian equivalent of :
http://rredc.nrel.gov/solar/codes_algs/PVWATTS/

But fog sounds pretty bad for solar pv to me.  And, I quess, fog means
no wind?  If so, that's it for wind power, unless there are some pretty
windy months when it's not foggy.
    Any falling water close by?


Pete Stanaitis
----------------------

 wrote:


Thanks, Pete.  That's an interesting product and I'm not sure if we
have anything like it on this side of the border.

I'm in a semi-urban environment, so wind and micro-hydro are pretty
much out of the picture and, as you can appreciate, solar is a bit of
a tough sell given our local climate and the other problems I
mentioned about our home.

The only cost-effective solution was to make our house as energy
efficient as possible.  To that end, for a 2,500 sq. ft., 40-year old
home in a 7,800 HDD climate, we use about 10,500 kWh of electricity
per year, plus 830 litres/221 gallons of fuel oil and 90 litres/24
gallons of propane (cook top, dryer and BBQ).  Our neighbours use at
least as much electricity as we do and typically five, six and even
seven times as much fuel oil so, all in all, we're not doing too
badly.

Cheers,
Paul