My Electricity bill after installing a DIY Solar System
I am going to be covering my very first electricity bill after installing our 10kw Solar System. I will discuss what my monthly payment was and the true cost saving we achieved on this month’s electricity bill.
The Enphase Enlighten Software vs Our Utility Bill.
If you are not familiar with the Enphase Enlighted software, this is the software you will be using to monitor an Enphase-powered solar system. Here you will see our monthly “produced” kWh was 994.9kWh for the billing cycle between July 25, 2022 – August, 25th 2022.
The only number we will be focusing in the screenshot above is the “Produced kWh” of 994.9kWh. Note: some of the other data points will not be accurate because I will not have my consumption monitoring CT’s hooked up for this first-month cycle. I have gotten them installed ( How to install Consumption Monitoring CT’s – Video ) I will have that data in my next month’s saving video.
July 25th – Aug 25th 2022 Electric Bill
During this period of time we consumed 728kWh from the power company. Our overproduction was 540kWh for the same period of time. So, the net amount billed to us was 188kWh.
Our Actual Total Consumption
If you refer back to the Enphase Enlighten image you will see where we produced 994.9 for that time period. We overproduced during the day and sent that overage to the grid, however at night we became consumers. Nevertheless, we used all 994.9kWh we produced and still had to import an additional 188kWh. During this month’s billing statement we consumed 1183kWh. This will be important to know to determine how much we really saved on this month’s bill.
Watch It Below
How Much Did I Save Monthly With Our Solar System
Let’s work out the number and find the true cost savings. We have a Member Cost of Service and School Tax no matter if we use any electricity or not. The member service is $13.99. On this bill, the school tax was $1.12. So no matter what, our bill will always be at least $15.11. Our cost per kWh is $0.09184. To make this simple we will just multiply that by 1183 which is $108.65. The FAC cost is $0.015422 per kWh. That would have been a total of $18.24.
Now we need to calculate the Enviro Surcharge which is 9.66% of the total (Member Cost, kWh Charge and FAC). $13.99 + $108.65 + $18.24 = $140.88 x 9.66% = $13.61. Without solar, this month’s bill would have been $186.72. We paid only $38.58. Saving us $148.14
The Conclusion
Real-life examples are far better than anything you will get from a solar calculator. There are so many factors to take into consideration when trying to calculate solar production. In the end, I got our system pretty close to what we were looking to achieve. I think next month we will slightly overproduce to start building a NET Metering Bank. I will be sure to share the next bill in a future blog and video.
