Technology has advanced to the point that utilities now have the ability to monitor and control your electric consumption minute by minute, rather than monthly. Many utilities are installing “Time of Use” (ToU) net meters at customer’s locations who have previously built solar photovoltaic systems. You need to be aware of the ramification of this change so you can neutralize its negative aspects.

This is simply another effort to get the consumer to pay for more electricity in the continuing tug of war between the solar owner and the power company. However, you are not helpless in the utility’s endeavor to lesson the effectiveness of your solar system, but you do need to understand the basics. “Time of Use” is exactly what it sounds like, and this technology gives the utility the capability to charge more for power during times of the day they determine to be peak load, and pay less for the power you make that they consider to be off peak or mid peak.

First, carefully read about your utility’s plans for ToU charges and be smart when you consume power. Second you need to adjust some of your habits to use more electricity during the solar peak hours of the day when your solar system is producing at its maximum, or later in the evening when the utility is selling electricity at cheap off peak pricing. The third tool you have at your disposal is to add some solar panels to your existing system, or when building a new system design it larger than the kilowatt/hour (kWh) calculations depict you needed, in order to combat the “time of use” meters.

Want to learn more…read on? 

For those of you that may have forgotten what “net metering” means, in the simplest terms it is a bi-directional electric meter that will spin forward when you take electricity from the grid and spin backward when you are over producing and giving electricity to the grid. Time of Use Net Meter means that the energy consumed or produced will have a different dollar value based on the time of day your meter is spinning forward or backwards. A kWh of power is still always a kWh, but the value of that kWh changes throughout the day and/or season with these smart electronic meters.

Let me share with you an example to help illustrate what “time or use net metering” is attempting to do to the relative value of your solar system’s yield. EXAMPLE: Let us assume your utility has designated their peak period of the day as being from 3 pm to 7 pm, weekdays. The power company knows people are coming home from work, making dinner, doing laundry, turning on the air-conditioning, and perhaps charging their new EV.

1. Let’s say your utility will charge .20c/ kWh during this peak
   • Remember this is the time of day when the solar pv system is either not producing any power {winter} or producing very
2. Now for simplifying this example lets say 1pm- 3pm is mid peak and that the utility has decided electricity has a lower dollar value during these hours, so they will designate this time frame as .10c/kWh.
   • Coincidentally this is the power band time of day when most solar production is at its peak.
3. Still keeping this simple, lets say your solar system produced 30 kWh during the middle of the day when electricity is only worth .10c/kWh
   • If no one was home and the house was not consuming any of this power and all of the electricity went to the grid via your net meter, the value credited to you with these new fancy meters would be 30 kWh x .10c or $3.00.
4. Assume you come home after 3pm and start using a lot of energy and consume 15 kWh of electricity from your power company before 7pm. (the sun is low and the solar is not producing so all the power is coming from the grid)

• • 15 kWh used x .20c/kWh = $3.00 during the peak time
  • So by consuming only half the energy during the peak period than your solar system produced during mid peak, your power company would be able to wipe out any solar credit you would hope to built during the
  • Thus effectively removing the likelihood of a photovoltaic owner’s ability to fill their solar bank account to combat the winter low production months, or just to get through the night hours of any day without buying
  • Your utility would have effectively received twice the energy from the customer’s photovoltaic system during mid peak than your utility provide during peak hours, but yet the dollars would be a wash in value.

Years ago a kWh was kept in one’s solar bank as a kWh. Then power companies wised up and started converting any energy they receive from a solar system’s over production into dollars/cents based on the value in the month that the power company received that extra energy. Without these new smart time or use meters they could only do this conversion monthly after manually reading the meter and thus putting excess energy in the customer’s solar bank ledger. Now with these new meters they can do this conversion instantly for any and all energy spinning the meter in either direction.

Hence, we all need to be smarter as to how we consume electricity and or build larger solar photovoltaic systems to combat this smart meter technology. While I have never before advocated building systems larger than a home’s historical consumption, I now recommend that systems be at least 120% of historical consumption to neutralize some of this time of use scheme. Plus, If an EV is in the near future plans, or electric hot water heaters, then larger still may be warranted.

The utilities are always trying to thwart our efforts to make our own power and become energy independent, we just need to keep adapting as they place the hurdles in our path.

Sincerely,

David B. Waldman
President, ARE Solar
david@AREsolar.com