How Many Solar-Charged LEAF Drivers?

[solarchargeddriver]

We have solar panels that provide a little more energy than our house uses per year. We deliberately sized them that way. Many new homes here are built with solar panels, but nearly all of them are undersized because the rate structure has been such that you don't get paid a cent for any excess electricity you produce.

It's a shame that solar incentives/rebates etc. are tilted to discourage the homeowner from doing what he/she wants to do in terms of sizing a system.

We had to finesse the system here in Xcel Energy territory on Colorado's front range in order to get a Solar Rewards Rebate for a system that would be large enough to power 100 percent of our home electric plus at least 12,000 miles a year in an EV, as the Colorado PUC has a so-called 120-percent rule. We succeeded in finessing the system, though, and got a 5.59 kW system up on home in June, complete with a $3.50 per watt rebate from Xcel (that rebate is now down to about $2 per watt). I write about how we finessed the system here: http://solarchargeddriving.com/editors-blog/on-going-solar/429-how-many-pvev-miles-could-you-be-banking.html

Although it gave us a pretty hard time in terms of our system size and the rebate, turns out Xcel isn't all bad. Although it pays Solar Rewards customers a pittance for extra kWh they produce (4 to 7 cents per kWh, and there's no TOU at all here), it does allow you to indefinitely bank extra system production. We opted to take this option, which, if you're thinking gasoline offset, is up to 15 times more valuable than getting paid for extra kWh.

In 6 months, we've pumped out 2,700 kWh more than we've used -- and banked them for our future EV. We could come close to 5,000 kWh extra by mid-summer, and, if the LEAF doesn't get here to COlorado until December 2011 (or later), we could be looking at 7,000 kWh banked, or somewhere between 21,000 and 28,000 solar EV miles -- what I like to call Sun Miles, by the time we get a LEAF. That's somewhere around $3,000 worth of "gasoline" using 25 mpg, $3 per gallon, and 3-4 miles per kWh.

If one has this banking option, and one wants to power an EV with solar in the future, it's fairly good incentive to size a "oversize" a home solar system in anticipation of that future EV. I wish I knew how many other utilities allow indefinite kWh banking -- does anyone else out there have a utility that allows this and/or know where I could go to figure out which utilities allow banking/rolling over of extra kWh produced by a home solar system?

 

[Electric4Me]

It's a shame that solar incentives/rebates etc. are tilted to discourage the homeowner from doing what he/she wants to do in terms of sizing a system.

Yeah, when I installed my 6.4 kW system this October PG&E asked for proof of why I over sized it. I sent them a copy of my Leaf order. For my system I sized it for a projected 70% of my total household + Leaf use. I assumed that I'd consume 14 kWh of a daily average in the Leaf, so of course my percentage will go up or down depending on that.

 

[solarchargeddriver]

It's a shame that solar incentives/rebates etc. are tilted to discourage the homeowner from doing what he/she wants to do in terms of sizing a system.

Yeah, when I installed my 6.4 kW system this October PG&E asked for proof of why I over sized it. I sent them a copy of my Leaf order. For my system I sized it for a projected 70% of my total household + Leaf use. I assumed that I'd consume 14 kWh of a daily average in the Leaf, so of course my percentage will go up or down depending on that.

Not sure if Xcel would have accepted a copy of a LEAF order as sufficient proof. And we went under contract for our system in August 2009, well before we could have shown any proof of a LEAF order. We did order a LEAF in April 2010, 3 months before our June 2010 installation of what turned out to be a 5.59 kW system. But, by May 2010, Xcel accepted our application for a 5.59 kW system based on a April 2009-2010 annual kWh usage cycle. We switched a portion of our winter heat from gas to electric to up our electricity use temporarily to get the 5.59 kW system with the full $3.50 per watt Xcel Rebate.

The very fact that I have to devote ridiculous amounts of space to explaining the whole saga shows how America's maze of solar incentives is completely out of control. We need a federal feed-in tariff....

 

[garygid]

You can "bank" extra kWh indefinitely?
Here, we "lose" them an the end of the billing year.

 

[solarchargeddriver]

You can "bank" extra kWh indefinitely?
Here, we "lose" them an the end of the billing year.

Yup, when filling out Xcel's Solar Rewards contract, you can make a one-time, non-transferable decision to bank the extra kWh you produce for as long as you live in your home. If you move, the extra kWh are lost.

Not a bad deal, eh -- especially when you think about banked kWh as "gas" for a future EV, as we are.

Of course, Xcel seems to go out of its way to try and push Solar Rewards customers to end-of-year-payout for extra kWh, as it's obviously in its financial interests to do so (they charge 11 cents per kWh, pay you 4 to 7 cents for the extra kWh you produce). So, for instance, if you don't read the fine print, you get defaulted into the end-of-year payout option.

 

[ERG4ALL]

We have a 6.7kWh system that went on-line June 2, 2010. When we sized our system we didn't really know what our future use might be so we over-sized it. Thus, through the end of November we have "banked" over 4,800 kWh with our utility. We installed some extremely efficient heat pumps which helps plus we did a lot of window insulation (dual pane + insulating shades). I do a lot of projects and added a fair amount of kWh for the arc welders. Thus, we really didn't have a past record (it's a new house 2008) that was reliable. Another reason for over-sizing is that our utility had a cap that paid 50% of the cost just beyond the size of our system. Now this winter we won't be banking near the juice we did in the summer and fall but my hope is that when the annual accounting is done (April) that we may get a check for the excess that will cover our fixed charges that we've had to pay each month ($27.05) plus be able to drive the LEAF for about 12,000 miles per year.
It would be really neat if Nissan could gather the PV info from buyers and publish it so we would have some hard facts to refute the nay sayers that say we're just moving pollution from the tailpipe to the generation station. I'd expect that us early adopters would have a much higher percentage of PV installations than the populace at large.

 

[solarchargeddriver]

We have a 6.7kWh system that went on-line June 2, 2010. When we sized our system we didn't really know what our future use might be so we over-sized it. Thus, through the end of November we have "banked" over 4,800 kWh with our utility.

What utility allows you to bank the extra hours?

I'd like to start a list of utilities that allow banking at SolarChargedDriving.Com, and I would love to be able to add your utility to the list.

So far, the list would consist of two utilities:
- Xcel Energy
- The Name of Your Utility

But I'm guessing there must be more. It would be really useful for people who want to go solar before they get a LEAF, or another EV, to know if they could bank extra kWh to use later. There would be quite a bit of incentive to go solar before the EV and oversize if they knew they could bank the extra kWh for that EV. Of course, utility rebates tied to system size might at the same time reduce incentive to go PV before EV, even if said utility allows kWh banking.

--Christof D-H
Editor, SolarChargedDriving.Com

 

[wsbca]

What utility allows you to bank the extra hours?

In California, a relatively new law, Assembly Bill 920, requires utilities to compensate net-metering overproducers. The rates at which this compensation will be calculated is currently under review/negotiation, but unfortunately it looks like it's going to be closer to a wholesale rate than a retail rate. However, it's my understanding that the typical scenario for most customers (eg. SDG&E, PG&E, SCE) will be that at their 2011 true-up date, customers should be able to choose between cash reimbursement (for actual excess KwH, not time-of-use credit balances) and KwH rollover. That's not a sure thing but there are some indications that it might work that way - it may vary by utility. It's not at all clear to me how rolled over (banked) raw KwH could be gracefully applied to future TOU based usage - maybe this will only apply if you don't use TOU. We'll start our LEAF ownership with about 1000 KwH of banked usage on our meter, 6 months into our net metering year. I'm hopeful that our system will in general net to zero (actual, not TOU) each year with the LEAF but I'm planning, if possible, to roll whatever excess we have forward in July at our true up rather than taking a payment of (probably) .06/KwH. Because if in the future we end up net positive, we're going to be paying .13/KwH.

 

[TomT]

This bill, however, does NOT apply to "private" utilities such as the LADWP...

In California, a relatively new law, Assembly Bill 920, requires utilities to compensate net-metering overproducers.

 

[solarchargeddriver]

Hi everyone,
Thank you again for all of you who responded to the initial thread about solar-charged LEAF drivers. All of your responses were interesting and inspiring. As I noted I would in the initial thread, I have published some of your responses over at SolarChargedDriving.Com -- http://solarchargeddriving.com/news/solar-charged-driving/568-many-early-ev-adopters-likely-to-solar-charge.html

The aim in doing so is the same as the general goal of SolarChargedDriving.Com -- to help show the world the incredible possibilities of combining solar energy and electric vehicles and to show people that everyday people are solar-charging EVs!

Another aim of SolarChargedDriving -- which I started in Sept. 2009 -- is to create an online community of solar-charged drivers. To that end, we have social media pages that allow you to create a Facebook like profile, post photos, create a personal blog, post links to interesting YouTube videos, meet and make friends with other solar-charged drivers, and discuss the solar/EV synergy in a dedicated forum.

We would love to have more folks join us and help us build a true community of solar-charged drivers at SolarChargedDriving.Com -- http://solarchargeddriving.com/sun-miles-atrade/sun-miles-community.html

Finally, it's great to see the poll numbers here on mynissanleaf.com on how people are going to fuel their LEAF -- 67% via solar and green energy so far (out of 119 votes cast). Very impressive!

--Christof Demont-Heinrich
Editor & Founder, SolarChargedDriving.Com
http://solarchargeddriving.com

 

[garygid]

It already takes WAY too much of my time just to keep up with this forum.