I'm getting solar panels. I'll let you know how it goes in this discussion thread.

Solar is the way to go if you can. I looked at the sunpower website many years go and I had an ideal, shallow roof facing south. But my neighbothood of single story bungalows is being turned into a neighborhood of mega mansions with no yards. The mandatory 15' setbacks have been reduced to 5', so I decided against it. No neighboring houses have changed but my neighbor's wax myrtle privacy screen grew and has shaded atleast 20% of my roof so I'm glad I didnt waste the money. But, maybe the shade helps reduce my cooling bill. Good luck with your project!

True — distribution costs are a goodly chunk of the bill. However, there is an interesting problem relating to how to charge for (or recover the cost of) the power production part of the equation. Just how much is a kilowatt-hour of energy cost? What do you include in the cost? Just using the system which we have installed, depending on how you figure such things as depreciation, cost of land, maintenance, etc., a very good argument can be made that a kilowatt-hour from our array is worth between $0.27 and $0.35 in today's money. Should the power company pay the owner of the array that? As it happens, that is what the power company in our area effectively pays under 1:1 net metering.

But determining the actual value of a kilowatt-hour of power from any given PV array would be a rather difficult computation…

Now to make things even more messy, other power sources have other costs, some of which are difficult to quantify (the environmental impact of hydroelectric is notoriously hard to quantify).

But… on the other hand, one can also argue (reasonably) that distribution, then, is not being adequately funded (in my view, it isn't) and that electric rates should, in fact, be considerably higher to pay for maintaining and upgrading the distribution grid system. Not, I might point out, a politically popular point of view…

the energy you generate is likely being used locally, it doesn't use much of the distribution system and it requires less of the higher up parts of the distribution system be used.

i'd argue that the condition of the grid is the mismanagement of the utility they gave money that they did not have to their shareholders, it was money that they needed to use to maintain the infrastructure that makes them money. i see it as no different than taking out a loan, giving it to their shareholders then expecting the customers to repay the loan. in my area they have owned the infrastructure for over 100 years. the sate it is in is their responsibility.

edit: and you complained about my comment about the ai fiction that said tempered glass could crack rather than shatter.

either your post is going to drift in all sorts of directions or it is going to rocket to page 2 and beyond to never be seen again

@ethicalpaul What, if anything, does the solar company say about your roof that will hold the panels? Do they take any responsibility for roof repairs? Was the roof assessed before installation? Is there any language in the contract that concerns the roof?

Without 1;1 net metering, the PV array we installed would not have been cost effective — and we wouldn't have done it.

For what it's worth, the net return on capital invested in a power company — as it might be your local utility — is around 4% at last count. It's quite possibly one of the worst investments one could make with one's money. Not that I am a financial advisor — far from it — but at that rate of return, the power companies simply cannot attract the investment required to maintain the distribution system, even locally, never mind upgrade.

So does mine — but they cant replace aging components, nor upgrade it. It's purely reactive, not proactive.

With how much NJ has grown, all I've seen is more and more transmission lines run etc.

My power goes out for a short time maybe once every 5 years. I still haven't been able to actually use the NG generator I built 5 years ago.

All I ever see is JCP&L and PSE&G upgrading and replacing equipment.

There's always the chance it's not the same everywhere. Also, they just increased everyone's electric bill by 20%, so maybe that's part of it too.

Here is what 6200W did for my place.

Is that thing that looks like roof jacks and planks actually the bottom rail?

is that some sort of uhf or microwave antenna on the tripod near the gable?

If I was in charge of an HOA and someone wanted an armature radio antenna I'd require a decent tower and a reasonably sized yagi. None of this cheesy roof tripod stuff. 😉

@ethicalpaul - re: "About the same price as a boiler install" - I'm over in NY, but probably not too far, and my 5KW array (after incentives) was a little cheaper than the boiler I had installed the year before. The array has continued to average around 500 kwh/month for the last 7 years (+/- 10% based on weather), which, as electricity prices have come close to doubling in the last 7 years, has had a substantially better financial return than my boiler.