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Bought a House - Moving to Concord. Crazy!!

greenmonster said:
Regarding solar, if you want to go a little cheaper skip getting the battery backup. We installed solar 3 years ago after paying $500-$600/mo PG&E bills in the summer and our electric bill has dropped to almost nothing each month.
I was a Nazi about turning off lights and not running the AC so much. Now I don't care, what a relief.

We still want to get a storage battery but they aren't cheap and something always comes up that's more important.
Click to expand...

Battery will maximize the effectiveness of your system, allowing you to potentially use less panels to save money if that is your interest. The additional benefits are around resiliency, as a battery system set up correctly, will allow you to operate your building in a PSPS or similar blackout event, but you must ensure the design instructions are clear to set it up that way. Local utilities prefer you do not have that ability and will push for an installation of batteries on the other side of the switch.
 
You can also diy the battery a lot easier than solar. There are kits out there where you assemble yourself and save some moolah
 
One thing that can be done is to use dimmer switches and dimmable LED bulbs. It actually makes a difference in your electric bills.
 
greenmonster said:
Regarding solar, if you want to go a little cheaper skip getting the battery backup. We installed solar 3 years ago after paying $500-$600/mo PG&E bills in the summer and our electric bill has dropped to almost nothing each month.
I was a Nazi about turning off lights and not running the AC so much. Now I don't care, what a relief.

We still want to get a storage battery but they aren't cheap and something always comes up that's more important.
Click to expand...
You didn't need a battery under Net Metering 2 which is what we have.

Under Nem 3 a friend got 2 batteries.
 
GAJ said:
You didn't need a battery under Net Metering 2 which is what we have.

Under Nem 3 a friend got 2 batteries.
Click to expand...

Fundamentally untrue. It depends on the output of your system during the day and if it is enough to generate credit to offset your solar use when the system isn't producing at night. If you build a big enough system, that can be true, but may not be.
 
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