Solar Panels some questions.

[Lenny]

Oh god yes. Our bill was $9 last time for 3 months. The previous years it was $270-$380. But that's summer. We generate a lot more in summer.
Our feed in tariff is $0.66. Our actual usage tariff/rate is $0.28. So, it's a very false economy. Massively subsidised by the Govt.

[Astrolady]

excellent, that is what I was worried about. Having an extra bill but still paying the same amount electricity. So good to know I won't be ... during summer at least LOL.

I am going to ring AGL as a starter point and get someone out for a quote. Will then ring others.

[EsJay]

ask how much your will get in your state, as the amounts ive seen in this thread are twice and triple what we can get in NSW! wish we lived in another state or signed up when the gov was still giving 40 and 60c over here. i think agl add on to what the gov give in nsw to get you to go with them, but its only a 2year contract from what i could find at the time when we were putting ours up.

[veus]

Our feed in tariff is $0.66. Our actual usage tariff/rate is $0.28. So, it's a very false economy. Massively subsidised by the Govt.

check what the govt subsidy is now. Lenny got the 60c one but I have a feeling it's less now.


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[onthefly]

We just get one bill here Will depend how your electricity market is organised there.

[Astrolady]

Going by the Government of SA we'll be in Group 4 if we connect soon

Customer group 4

Approved permission to connect received between 1 October 2011 and 30 September 2013


Feed in tariff offered - 16 cents per kWh exported to the grid until 30 September 2016

You may also receive a minimum retailer payment from your electricity retailer. --- AGL (in our case) offer an extra 8c on top of that, so would be 24 cents per kwh

[Lenny]

Oh bummer. What is your price per KWH?
You might need to invest in a bigger unit to see some improvement in your bills.

[onthefly]

Is that the total state + federal rate? I think the Fed pays 7c on top of whatever you get at the state level. In WA it's now 20 + 7.... it sucks.
If they actually cared about this they'd keep the higher feed-in tariffs...

[Astrolady]

Oh bummer. What is your price per KWH?
You might need to invest in a bigger unit to see some improvement in your bills.

For our Non-Summer Rate (up till Dec 31st) it is $0.2469
For our Summer Rate (from Jan 1st( it is $0.2602

It has 2 other rates after both of those as well. We have like 7 different rate variations on our bill :/

[onthefly]

well that bites.

[veus]

For our Non-Summer Rate (up till Dec 31st) it is $0.2469
For our Summer Rate (from Jan 1st( it is $0.2602

It has 2 other rates after both of those as well. We have like 7 different rate variations on our bill :/

I think u have a what they call time of use rate, ie peak, shoulder & off-peak for each day. Within summer period it's one set of rates & non-summer is another set of rates.

Because of the transition between the summer & non-summer period uve got at least 6 sets of rates + supply charge.

If you get a bigger unit you might not be eligible for the govt thing. But it might be better for u if it generates ebuf. Ask AGL if u get bigger units what generation rates would they give u. Sometimes it's 1-1.

So if u pay $0.2469 per kwh, then u get -$0.2469 per kwh. But usually these are probably At the discretion of the retailer. Unless there is additional scheme from govt.

Ure doing the right thing by asking quotes from everyone. Then u can see what's been missed by one retailer if any.


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[Lenny]

Just an aside...
If you do in fact have peak and off peak rates (ours are 7am-11pm peak, 11pm - 7am off peak + the whole weekend), you can get very clever at making your electricity bill cheaper.

These are my tricks:
Oven on in the weekend only (for a mass muffin baking session)
Washing maching on delay start so that it finishes before 7am
Dishwasher on delay start so that it starts after 11pm
Dryer on in the weekend (or not at all if possible)

Of course there are times when these rules can't work - but it's good to try. Our off-peak is one third the price of the peak.

[Astrolady]

I had a big chat to the kids today about turning things off at the wall. A habit I too need to get into

I rang AGL yesterday and all the consultants were busy, so the lady said she'd get someone to ring me back. I am still waiting. Has been 24 hrs now. So I guess they can't want business to badly.

Thanks for the tricks Lenny. I do try and do all my washing on the weekend. Although it is going around at the moment cause I have family etc coming tomorrow so need to clean up. We don't own a dishwasher or a dryer either

I just had my mum ring to complain about my Grandmothers' electricity bill too. My Grandmother has been in hospital for 1 month and lives with no one else. Absolutely no electricity has been used, apart from bare essentials like the running of the fridge & freezer and her electricity too had sky rocketed. So there must have been a huge jump in rates during that period.

[Astrolady]

AGL finally rang back. She said we'd probably need a 3 KW system going off our last bill and that we'd be looking around $8000 dollars. She said that would probably take $200 - $300 off our electricity bill.

Think I better keep saving LOL.

[Lenny]

Is it worth it? If you put an extra $8k on your mortgage over 20 years you would end up paying about $7000 in interest over and above that!
That's $15,000 in savings you need to make back before you break even. Even if you do save $250 per bill - that's 60 bills before you start seeing a return!

[Astrolady]

Yeah Lenny. We'd never be able to get up $8000 unless we took out another loan, or won lotto LOL. So from our POV definitely not worth it, to be only saving half on bills.

[veus]

That's a bum that it's gonna cost so much.


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