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Guest English Rose

I rent a new house with solar panels on the roof. I have a fridge, TV, and computer that are on about 17 hours a day plus other appliances and lights that would be used for short periods of time and the pump to move the water up.

My mid Feb to mid Apr bill said I used 318 kWh that cost me $406p. My solar panels are in the sun all day, no shade. :D

So what am I doing that my CFE bill is 10 times the amount of some others here? How do I 'correct' it or who would be the best person to look at the system? :wacko:

I appreciate any help.

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That is not bad. Sure by maybe getting LED bulbs, and running some of the appliances somewhat less you could drop your usage. It starts getting 3  to 4 times more expensive when your average more than 500 KWH per 2 months over a one year or less period.

If you want to check things out, get yourself a Kill-A-Watt meter and start looking for the heavy KWH users and see where you can save even more electricity.

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1 hour ago, English Rose said:

I rent a new house with solar panels on the roof. I have a fridge, TV, and computer that are on about 17 hours a day plus other appliances and lights that would be used for short periods of time and the pump to move the water up.

My mid Feb to mid Apr bill said I used 318 kWh that cost me $406. My solar panels are in the sun all day, no shade. :D

So what am I doing that my CFE bill is 10 times the amount of some others here? How do I 'correct' it or who would be the best person to look at the system? :wacko:

I appreciate any help.

What am I missing? You have an $11/mo (US) electric bill and you want to spend money to reduce it further? Does that make economic sense?

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Guest English Rose
45 minutes ago, pappysmarket said:

What am I missing? You have an $11/mo (US) electric bill and you want to spend money to reduce it further? Does that make economic sense?

Sure it does. Why would I pay $406pesos and another person pay .40p? Others are building a credit and another said his highest was $200p while running an air conditioner. So I was asking......why?

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English Rose, the reason I only pay 46 pesos every 2 months is because I have one or two more panels than I need. If you are in DAC and paying very high rates for electricity the payback on photo-voltaic solar panels is quite short but if you are only paying for maybe 100 or 150 KWH per month you are being billed at a very small subsidized rate per KWH. And it does not make economic sense to buy solar panels. But like you, English Rose I want to generate as much power as I use and get charged the minimum rate of 23 or 24 pesos per month or now being billed every two months, paying twice that now that much.

So it may not make economic sense to buy those one or two extra panels, but I just had to get them :)

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13 hours ago, English Rose said:

Sure it does. Why would I pay $406pesos and another person pay .40p? Others are building a credit and another said his highest was $200p while running an air conditioner. So I was asking......why?

The answer is that they have more solar panels and their system is producing more power than yours.

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English Rose, you may also "do better" on the CFE bills now and the next 4 months as the solar days are longer and the sun is stronger - IF your consumption stays the same.   However - fridges work harder in the heat, people have been and continue to use fans and some A/C, so one needs to keep those things in mind.    

The economic advice provided to you by the other posters is spot on, however.

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We have 10 panels and our bill averaged 500 pesos over a year... The former owner was paying 2500 to 3000 per billing period... without the panels... We had E Sun come out and we found that our pool pump is drawing 14.5 amps instead of the normal 8, which means that running the pump for 4 hrs daily is accounting for 50% of our bill...

Replacing the pump with a 2 speed or variable speed will cost around $800 USD... But the usage is less than 1/4 that of the existing pump. 

Moral: If you have a pool and have a single speed pump you are paying tooooo much!

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Esun told me the same thing, I had been saving up for a long time and then two months before they started this I had an outage to 2/3 of my panels because of an error I made. (I have an old fashioned battery back up system and didn't re-order my deep cell batteries on time.) To make a long story short, I used up my credit several months before they would have wiped them out for the first time.

What I do now is if I have a little extra power before the end of the year I heat the house with an electric heater rather than give anything to them to erase.

Oh, several long time users say that their accounts weren't zero-ed out. Who knows

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johanson we didn't go with a back up battery system for power outages during the rainy season because we were told that batteries are very expensive an not necessarily reliable.  I am still drawn to a battery though as I think it would be nice to have power during blackouts.  Can you comment on your battery, pro or con and how expensive are they?

 

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As CFE became more reliable fewer and fewer people have been putting battery back systems in. In fact some if not most solar companies don't even install them anymore. First you used the singular word battery.   I needed or need 8 batteries, They Trojan deep cell 6 volt golf cart batteries and they are very expensive and because I did not use them very often mine lasted more than 7 years. I don't remember the added costs because the system was installed inl ate 2007 and went active in early 2008 But it was a lot more than $1,000

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On 5/20/2017 at 6:14 PM, J.Miller said:

johanson We went with e-sun too and were told that some people have their credit wiped out at the end of the year if it hasn't been used and others do not.  It sounds like there isn't a whole lot of consistency and it depends a lot on your personal luck!

It is a rolling most recent 12 month period for tracking credits, and only any credits from the 13th month or older are dropped.    The CFE policy is clear, the info you were given was not correct.

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Our 18 panel system from STI with micro inverters will pay itself off in about another year.  I approached this installation from both the supply (panels) and demand (power consumption) side.  Low efficiency lighting and motors were retrofitted and more attention was paid to turning things off when not directly needed.  Also attention was paid to the maintenance side of things, making sure it was easy to wash the panels with softened water as it is pretty dusty around here.

We couldn't be more satisfied with the system or the supplier, STI.  It was well engineered and installed.  I did determine the sizing, location and basic design with their help.  The other thing to keep in mind is that it is a lot of trouble to move these panels to get to the roof underneath.  We renewed the roof before installing the panels.  As the roof is now shaded by the panels it should last indefinitely.

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59 minutes ago, Go Solar said:

It is a rolling most recent 12 month period for tracking credits, and only any credits from the 13th month or older are dropped.    The CFE policy is clear, the info you were given was not correct.

This was the explanation I too received many years ago but at that time CFE was unable to execute the plan. Perhaps their computer system has been modified.

Each month you have a credit you generate an acumulada. That credit would have to go into  a bucket for this month. If  you have an aplicada meaning you are eating away at a credit, it would have to come from the oldest bucket having a balance. Depending on your usage  it could take more than one month's credit to break even. 

While CFE has  the historical  usage information accumulated monthly for a 2 year period, they had no such method to store similar information about solar credits.

Bancomer does a similar thing with their puntos. After  12 months the oldest period drops  off but  in their case, the system is designed to track points by month. When you use points, they are debited from the oldest months on file until they're totally gone.

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  • 2 years later...
3 hours ago, Mainecoons said:

You're better off starting a new thread than resurrecting one that was on a different topic area of solar.

You're going to need battery backup as the solar doesn't work when the grid is down if you are planning on grid tying.

 

 

 

2 hours ago, Mostlylost said:

You might find that MC4 connectors are cheaper on Mercadolibre.  Be sure that you have the proper isolation from the grid when the power is off.  

 

3 hours ago, Mainecoons said:

You're better off starting a new thread than resurrecting one that was on a different topic area of solar.

You're going to need battery backup as the solar doesn't work when the grid is down if you are planning on grid tying.

 

 

Thank you. I was tempted to start a new thread but the title was Questions about ...... so I put it in. I am new to this board so my apologies.

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