On Apr 10, 3:54*am, David Nebenzahl wrote:
On 4/4/2011 6:16 AM Home Guy spake thus:

You are paid 80 cents / kwh for *any* electricity leaving your array (a
billing meter is installed right after your invertors). *It doesn't
matter if your own home (AC unit, etc) will suck 100% of that solar
energy with none of it going back into the grid.

and

But still - you can't push more electricity onto a network than the load
is asking for (given that your invertors are functioning correctly I
guess).

Are you sure about that first statement? Pardon me if I misunderstand
what you wrote, but don't you only get paid for the *net current*
leaving your meter? If you're generating 5KW but "sucking" 6KW into your
AC, etc., then you have a 1KW net draw, so you're not gonna get paid
anything, correct?


The 80c per kwh seems very high. But strange as it may seem, here
in the Peoples Republic of NJ, you get paid for the total amount of
electricity the solar array generates, not just the excess amount.
It's not
a direct payment per kwh though. That would be too easy.

The actual story goes something like this. Utilities are being forced
by
law to supply increasing amounts of renewable energy. They can meet
that number through a variety of ways. They could buy it from wind
sources on the grid, for example. But they can also buy certifcates
from folks who generate solar at their homes or businesses. That
certificate counts just like if they had bought energy from company
X's windmill on the wholesale grid somewhere.

Every time the homeowner solar array generates a certain amount
of KWH of energy, the homeowner gets one certificate. Then it
gets more complicated. They have some kind of auction system
that determines how much those certifcates are worth and how
much your power company will pay for it. The amount has
flucutated widely, for factors I don't understand. But in recent
years the typical 8KW array could generate a couplel thousand
dollars a year back to the homeowner.

Oh, and I think they will also actually pay you an additional small
amount for any net amount you put into the grid once a year too.