10 mega-watt hours

So, are they paying you for the energy, or does enphase make all the money?

Jon

It's all subsidized by us sucker taxpayers :-( ...Jim Thompson

did I do the math right?

Thats about $157 worth of electricity per month?

or about $2k per year.

How much did the system cost you?

How much did it cost us taxpayers?

I purchased the system, and own its electricity, enphase server access is part of my purchase.

True, in part, but may I point out that you enjoy cheap electricity from a dam built by US taxpayers. We don't have anything like that here. Most of our energy is subsidized in one way or another.

Actually, no. My electricity comes from nuclear, coal and natural-gas-fired plants. ...Jim Thompson

Almost, we pay about $0.20/kWh, so 10MWh = $2k and over 12 months we might save $2.2 to 2.3k.

$10k. The 30% Residential Energy Credit program** was recently extended a few more years by the Republican house and senate.

Anyway, my interest is in the power generated; it's sobering to realize those pieces of glass on my roof are making so much energy.

Do your power credits roll over to the next year? (anniversery date) I think your allowed to change it once. And most recomend to place it in April/May, so the winter bills can be offset. You may find that your Jan/Feb bill are 'high'

Cheers

As well as wind, solar, hydro and possibly geothermal, but don't tell anyone.

Arizona is a big solar state. A relative works for SunCity. After Nevada's shutdown his entire outfit moved to Tuscon, installing new systems.

I don't know for sure, but my understanding is the credits do not expire. However, if we make more than we consume, we don't get paid for any excess. But we can give it to someone else in our district. Like maybe our town's Senior Citizens Center.

Wind? Where?

And the AG is cracking down on the solar scams. ...Jim Thompson

The really productive states are North Dakota and Wyoming, mostly in farm and grazing areas. Arizona is not on the list.

If you look at the 2nd graph (Renewables), you'll see the current figures for various forms of non-fossil fuel power production, including wind, for most of northern California. At the moment, wind power production is near zero, probably because there's no wind. You can see what the wind is doing at:

That is so cool. When we have a forest fire somewhere nearby, I'll be able to predict if we'll get smoke.

More, with different areas of interest and displays:

Try the various display options on the left menu. Some are slow to load: All the one's I've seen use data from the National Digital Forecast Database.

I asked some of the local sailors if they use such wind maps. The answers varied, but most said that they might use forecast data for wide area wind predictions, but not for wind direction and velocity near coastal features or at low wind velocities. I've verified the problem with local weather stations. If there's local turbulence or

Arizona is not a little electrical island. It is interconnected with the entire West Coast and electricity generated in numerous ways is bought and sold across the entire interconnection. So saying that "your" electricity comes only from the generators you see near your house is a wee bit inaccurate to say the least.

Is there a special "brown power" tarif? I'm thinking of the coal-roller equivalent of the "green power" tarifs (where the utility charges you extra and promises to only sell you renewable energy, and theoretically requires them to also purchase that much renewable energy), but the exact opposite, guaranteed 100% brown coal power. I guess there could be some sort of market for a "Brown Power" tarif, for Jim and these guys:

Yep, Arizona is a very well connected, although it's not with the entire left coast: The "Energy Imbalance Market" is legal way to resell cheap surplus renewable energy among it's members without being accused of running a price fixing cartel. It also helps its members comply with various Federal regulations. I expect the EIM to grow to other utilities.

Note that the EIM is not the whole electricity market, but just one way to sell energy. Typically there is a "day ahead" market and an "hour ahead" market. EIM seems to provide an automated solution for even faster response to accommodate intermittent resources (ie: wind and solar). However, If Arizona isn't currently taking advantage of cheap Pacific Northwest hydro power in the spring, they're wasting their customers' money. And likewise, the utilities with easily dispatchable generation and available storage (again, read hydro) are buying up cheap nuclear power at night and reselling it as hydro during the day.

That's exactly what EIM does, except the variations are mostly in the demand, not the supply. The faster response time allows it to deal with outages, storm failures, accidents, and other supply problems almost on a real time basis. The lessens the requirements to have surplus capacity available and online just in case something goes down. If you look at the CalISO site, the graphs mostly emphasize their ability to predict the demand. It also shows up in the "Net Demand" curve, which shows the effect of a variable renewable supply. Although it's not directly mentioned, such instant response to changes in supply availability and load are key components of the "smart grid".

Besides CalISO, there are also other such electric market operators: Left Coast North Dakota through northern Texas. Penn, Ohio, Virginia, etc Texas New York State Midwest The "about" page on the various web sites usually has a map of the areas covered. It's interesting to watch the large variations in spot prices for electricity.

In a drought, hydro isn't exactly a bargain. It's quite seasonal and much cheaper after the winter rains. For example, Lake Mead (Hoover Dam) is currently 37% of capacity and the Colorado River system less Lake Mead is at 51% of capacity. I'm too lazy to dig out numbers for Columbia River capacity, but my understanding is that they're doing much better than the Colorado River.