Kidhauler wrote:You can actually watch your hydro meter turn backwards. This means you are adding power to the grid and the power company has no choice but to buy it from you at the going rate. This is the law in all of North America so instead of getting a power bill you could be getting a check for a few bucks a month from the power company on top of getting free power.
I subscribe to Home Power magazine which is all about renewable energy and heavy on solar and wind power.
From what I understand, not all states treat back-fed power the same. In some states the utilities have to pay you the same rate you pay. (This is becoming the standard.) In others, they pay you the wholesale rate... basically what they pay for the power when they buy it from a source... which is considerably less. At one time some (many?) states didn't require the utility to pay you anything at all and I believe that still holds true in a few rare circumstances.
The one thing Home Power magazine pushes is to skip the battery bank unless you are absolutely up to the work required in keeping them properly maintained. The problem with this route is that you are still fully dependent on the 'grid'. When the grid goes down, so does your system (for line-worker safety).
Personally, I think everyone should want to bolt solar panels to their roof and have a battery bank in the basement/garage. I think for our own security and convenience, we should all be moving towards de-centralized power production. We've seen what can happen when just one power plant fails... it can bring down huge regions of the country for weeks. This problem isn't going to get better as demand continues to increase. (It's bad enough when you don't have electricity at home, but with your new electric car, you can't even go elsewhere!)
(By the way, Home Power magazine is produced by some real left-wing extremists who love taking shots at big oil, nuclear power, the president and other things. It's a struggle for me to continue reading sometimes, but I like the other info and hope to power our cabin--where running commercial power in is a $30K job--with solar in the future.)
!