I'm very excited to share this Solar Update. I installed last July, and this is the first month we've gotten "Free Power". While of course it's not really free since I'm still paying for the Solar Panels and other equipment, I can't begin to describe how nice is was to finally receive a credit from the Power Company instead of paying them.
Yes, you read it right. DO NOT PAY. Woohoo!
Not only do I not pay for the Month of March, I get credited $38.78 towards next months bill, and also get credited with another 278 kWh to apply to next month's (April) bill. Woot!
We did turn on the AC the last few days of March for some hot days, but still love this balance which clearly shows we produced more than we used in March.
March 2025 - Produced 1.7 MWh and used 1.3 MWh
February 2025 - Produced 1.1 MWh and used 1.3 MWh
January 2025 - Produced 1.0 MWh and used 3.2 MWh
December 2024 - Produced .883 MWh and used 1.7 MWh
November 2024 - Produced 1.1 MWh and used 1.8 MWh
October 2024 - Produced 1.3 MWh and used 2.0 MWh
September 2024 - Produced 1.2 MWh and used 2.7 MWh
August 2024 - Produced 1.6 MWh and used 3.1 MWh
2024 Totals (6 months starting mid-July) - Produced 7.1 MWh and used 13.2 MWh so Solar Produced about half of what we used those months.
2025 Q1 Totals (Jan-March) - Produced 4.1 MWh and used 6.2 MWh
The good news/bad news is that one of our A/C units is on the fritz again. We had to have work done on it last year, and now again this year after 3 attempts to fix with parts this year, the compressor is also bad. So after half the house being without A/C for 5 days now, it looks like we are waiting for quote to replace our A/C unit.
Here in the U.S. new A/C units must be built to have a new type of freon. This will have a silver lining and slightly good news in that the new unit will be much more efficient than the old unit and hopefully result in lower electric usage. Maybe even enough to bridge that small remaining Solar production gap in the hot months.
Reporting Bugs.
I found that the "Energy Independence" ratings are not what most people would expect.
While I personally would calculate Energy Independence by measuring the Net amount of (produced plus exported) minus (consumed minus Exported), but this is not how they calculate it. When I raised a help ticket with Enphase support, they simply responded with
"Energy Independence does not include energy exported and should not be mistaken with Net Metering (or Net Energy), which is the difference betweeen imported and exported energy." (source Enphase.com)
In my eyes this is a bogus answer with bogus numbers being produced. It would be nice if they could at least provide the Net Energy numbers since I know that I am not the only one that has raised this issue with them. I suppose at some point I may build a spreadsheet and track the real Net numbers myself, but shame on them for the inaccurate and inconsistent reporting.
