SOLAR
Want to see how well my system is working? Click Monitor My System for real time stats. (Opens in a new window)
NEW- My Solar Power Calculator is available for download! This is the spreadsheet that I use to track my systems production and consumption anytime I want to read my meter. This gives you a quick at a glance view of system performance to see if you’re building credits or burning through them. At the end of the month I just update the numbers with what’s on my bill to balance everything out.
Click here to download
Instructions: Save to your Desktop, open in Excel or Open Office, read your meter and note readings 3, 4, 6 and 7 then enter those numbers into the spreadsheet in the proper month in column M, N, P and Q. When you get your actual bill just update this sheet to the actuals from your bill. Enjoy!
Miguel Lombana, Mark Hansen, Don Harris, Solar City, Going Solar, Solar Installers Phoenix, solarcity.com
Does Solar really save? Check out my actual bills
Clicking these will open a new window; these are PDF files so you must have PDF installed to view.
| April 2010 APS | May 2010 APS | Jun 2010 APS | Jul 2010 APS | Aug 2010 APS |
| Future Sept 2010 | Future Oct 2010 | Future Nov 2010 | Future Dec 2010 |
In the interest of disclosure, I have removed my account and meter numbers from these billing statements, also you will see where I’ve made reference to my bill only being $ 16.69, yet the bill you’re looking at here shows $ 17.17, this is because I’m credited an additional .48 cents for using APS Surepay.
Miguel Lombana, Mark Hansen, Don Harris, Solar City, Going Solar, Solar Installers Phoenix, solarcity.com
Disclaimer: I am NOT an employee of Solar City; I’m just an extremely satisfied customer that can’t understand why every house in a state with over 300 days of sunshine a year isn’t getting its power from the sun!
Now, before you read the rest of this page let me make you an offer, my experience with Solar City and moving to a more ‘Green’ lifestyle was nothing short of exceptional and I am very willing to help others by answering the very questions that I already had to ask.
So don’t hesitate to contact me, you can click on the ‘Contact Me’ page in the upper right hand corner and either email me or call me and I’ll be more than happy to share my experience and answer any questions.
If you’d rather talk to a consultant at Solar City, I ask that you contact one of these two consultants directly as they are located here in Phoenix and will take the time to work with you personally. They are:
Mark Hansen: 602-568-8018 and Don Harris 602-377-8295
Finally, when you do contact them, please mention that you saw this site; it lets me know that I’ve made a difference! Now please enjoy my Solar City story!
Miguel Lombana, Mark Hansen, Don Harris, Solar City, Going Solar, Solar Installers Phoenix, solarcity.com
My Solar Power Story
On November 29th, 2009 I was watching the Home Hunter on ABC15 here in Phoenix and caught a segment on a company called Solar City. What caught my attention was a program that for me and my circumstances made sense, The Solar Lease. I could finally do something that I’d already been thinking about doing, adding solar electric (PV) to my home, but for no money out of pocket! Zero dollars down and a payment of fewer than 100 dollars a month!
What I see now as a ‘no brainer’ I managed to drag on for some time as I analyzed every aspect of the plan and what the expectations of a PV system on my house could bring me. I’m happy to say that the engineer in me paid off because my expectations are not only being met, they are being exceeded and I have the power bills to prove it!
Working with Solar City was amazing, they did EVERYTHING! All I had to do was sign the paperwork and wait for them to take care of the rest. They took care of every aspect that I would expect them to, a thorough and detailed design, all the required drawings that APS (my local power utility) requires, permitting, installation and follow ups. Best of all during the entire process they gave me a personalized web page to check on the entire process so I never had a question as to what was going to happen next.
Here is what you may expect
Right off the bat it’s going to be about a 4 month process! From the day I signed my documents to the day I had equipment installed was about 4 months, bear in mind that building permits need to be pulled and most important the power utility has to approve the design and approve you for rebates and subsidies, but the good news is that once that’s done, the pace is fast!
The installation of my system took the better part of 5 full days; it’s not a small system, 11kw (kilowatts) of green energy, it’s almost double what many homes I’ve seen have had installed. My honest suggestion, have the engineer that does your site audit fill every possible inch of available roof space with panels! This is truly one of those times where bigger is really better!
One area that I could not find a lot of information on while researching my project was, “What are they going to do to my roof?” I wanted to see pictures of how the work with the very common tile roofs here in Arizona. I wanted to know how they secure the system to the roof so that it’s not going to fly off in a strong wind or that the tiles aren’t going to be a weakness during monsoon rains.
Again I asked a ton of questions and finally got my answers but to make it easier for anyone else, I took a lot of pictures while my installation was taking place and posted them here, they are near the bottom of this page and are actually chronological showing each days progress. I hope that this can help anyone that has the same concerns that I had. I’m also happy to report that after the heavy rains we had earlier this year, not a single drop of rain penetrated my roofing system!
Near the end of the project and after the install is complete, the system is going to have to sit idle until 2 additional inspections take place. First the building and zoning department for your municipality will have to inspect the work and verify that Solar City did everything to code. My system passed on the first round and the inspector that came out here even said that he’s yet to find any problems with any of the Solar City systems he’s checked.
Just prior to the final inspection your power meter will be replaced by your utility company with a new ‘Bi-Directional’ meter that will monitor Kilowatt Hours Generated, this will be used to monitor power you produce which will offset your bill, more about that later.
The final inspection may take a several weeks, in my case it was about 3 weeks later, APS had to come out here and verify the system will not damage equipment on their network, Solar City was onsite with APS making sure that the install was according to the approved plans and that all the safety features are operational. The inspection was quick and once complete I was given a letter by the inspector who said my system is operational and to enjoy!
Solar City remained on site for a short time giving me an overview of the system and turning on my monitoring page so that I can view my system performance live! The link for you to view my system is at the top of this page, personally, this is really cool and Solar City does this not only for you but so that they can track system performance so that in the event of a problem they can be proactive and take care of it before you may even know about it.
After going live I waited to see my first bill and it totally met my expectations, since then my power generation has typically exceeded my power consumption by almost double, I’m generating twice as much every day as I have traditionally purchased for the same time period over the last 2 years.
A table below shows my last 2 years of energy consumption as well as my new solar energy production it’s very impressive to see that my bill from APS is now under $17 dollars a month thanks to the offset created by my energy production.
Kilowatt Hour Credits
Let me explain how this works since again this was an area that I was not able to get a clear answer on prior to going live.
After the sun goes down and your system isn’t generating power or at times when you (for whatever wasteful reason) have everything in the house turned on and your system isn’t able to produce more than you are using, you are buying power from the utility. Your meter is clicking away with ‘consumption’. The other times when your PV system is keeping up with or exceeding your needs your meter is spinning backwards and you’re in ‘production’ and your new bi-directional meter is keeping track of the power you’re generating.
At the end of the month when the power company reads your meter they will now take 2 readings, consumption and production and your production will be used to ‘pay down’ or offset your consumption. Basically if you used 500 kilowatt hours of their power and produced 1500 kilowatt hours of your own green power, your 1500 will pay off their 500 and you will also have an extra 1000 kilowatt hours in the form of ‘credits’ that will carry over to the next month, just like rollover minutes on a cellular plan!
In my case, the 3 heaviest months for consumption should be July through September where my system, which typically generates about 2000 kilowatt hours a month, will fall short of the amount of power that I have traditionally purchased from APS, but since I have enough credits saved up going into those months, I should be able to get through the summer maintaining a ridiculously low power bill! Keep track of my progress on the table below as I update it after each month’s bill.
So that’s about it, I hope that this helps you in making a decision that (as I said earlier in this post) is a ‘No Brainer’ and again if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact either myself via this site or Mark or Don from Solar City, in the end you’ll be very glad you did and remember, Think locally, Act Globally!
Actual Power History
The following table shows my billing history for the last 2 years and as of March 2010 shows my power production thanks to my new PV system.
Starting in March 2010 the table includes my power consumption (purchased from APS) as well as production (generated by solar). The column on the far right shows my ‘credits’ where if I generate more power than purchased, it carries over to the following months ‘rollover’.
Breaking it down …
In May 2010 my system produced 1597 kilowatt hours, in the hours where my system wasn’t producing power, I consumed or purchased 557 kilowatt hours from APS. My 1597 wiped out the 557 they delivered making my APS bill for May zero dollars (with taxes it’s actually $ 16.69 ) ! The balance that I generated, the remaining 1040 kilowatt hours, gets added to my April credit (1172 kilowatt hours) giving me a credit of 2212 kilowatt hours going into my June billing cycle.
Since my historical June billing is an average of 2459 kilowatt hours, my system only needs to generate about 200 kilowatt hours in June to wipe out my bill again for this month! Since I will exceed that number after just a couple of days into the billing cycle, I will again have a good surplus going into July.
What’s really exciting is that at the end of the fiscal year, any credits still on my bill are paid back to me by APS in the form of a check at the current residential plan! Yes I get paid by APS to have solar on my house! If you’re an APS customer and are curious about this program, it’s broken down on their website which you can access by clicking HERE this will open a new window.
| 2009 | 2010 | Production | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| kWh | APS Payment | kWh APS | APS Payment | kWh Solar | kWh Credits ** |
|
| Jan | 1015 | $109.32 | 1042 | $95.83 | ||
| Feb | 967 | $89.49 | 903 | $88.68 | ||
| Mar | 911 | $83.77 | 729 * | $38.97 + | 571 | 147 |
| Apr | 1071 | $112.07 | 478 * | $16.69 | 1503 | 1172 |
| May | 1326 | $179.66 | 557 * | $16.69 | 1597 | 2212 |
| Jun | 2068 | $269.12 | 780 * | $17.46 | 1588 | 3032 |
| Jul | 3377 | $352.64 | 1756 * | $18.07 | 1028 | 2292 |
| Aug | 2817 | $332.25 | 2033 * | $29.93 | 605 | 864 |
| Sep | 2658 | $304.07 | ||||
| Oct | 1881 | $218.15 | ||||
| Nov | 1054 | $120.58 | ||||
| Dec | 1083 | $115.67 | ||||
| Average | 1686 | $ 190.57 | 1034 | $ 40.29 | 1148 | |
| + Partial month 15 days on solar and 15 days on-grid * Now on Solar ** Each month APS calculates their "delivered" kWh's and subtracts my "production" kWh's anything left over is considered a "credit" that carries over to the next month like rollover minutes on a phone plan. At the end of the year APS will "true up" their accounting and send me a check for the credits that I have on account paid at the standard residential rate plan. |
||||||
solar city, renewable energy, phoenix, arizona, solar installer, home solar power
Miguel Lombana, Solar City, Going Solar, Solar Installers Phoenix
What follows is a chronological progression of my install including pictures of each days work, click any picture and it takes you to that days album so that you can view all of the pictures.
Enjoy!
phoenix, solar power installers, solarcity, solar city, install pv, solar lease, miguel lombana
Entries (RSS)
Solar PV Design
The first step in my house being retrofitted for solar power is a system design. SolarCity sent an engineer to my house and in about 4 hours he measured the roof, went inside the attic to measure the truss structure and detailed where all the homes electrical components are located. This is so a detailed design drawing can be submitted to APS my local power utility for their approval.
The system design was completed on November 30th and my blueprints were delivered to me on December 1st, the design is exactly what I wanted, maybe a few more panels on the southern roof over the garage would have been nice but the room is just not there.
Legend: 1. Inverter 48v to AC, 2. PV Generation Meter, 3. AC Main Panel, 4. APS Meter, 5. Zone Combiner Panel, 6. Load Combiner
Jan 25th, 2010- DAY 1
Today was the big day, the solar panel install began today, the installers arrived at 8am and started work on installing the dual inverters, the PV generation meter and cut off switches as well as some preliminary work in the main house electrical panel. Tomorrows work will include more wiring and interconnecting the system to the house panel and depending on progress may also include mounting the roof rails where the panels will eventually be mounted to.
Here are some of the pics from today’s work, clicking any will take you to the album.
Jan 26th, 2010- DAY 2
Today the guys picked up from where they left off yesterday, prepping the South and East facing roof for the solar panel rails. I have a ton of respect for these guys, I’ve been up on my roof and it’s not something for the faint of heart, over 35′ at the apex and they were working without a net so to speak.
These guys are fantastic, they are electricians, installers and from what I learned today, roofers, they literally have to take the roof tiles out, screw down the custom stand-off’s for the panels, cut the roof tiles to fit and re-install them, pretty impressive, oh and I just found out they are also painters, they asked me for the color of my home so they can purchase the color to paint up the conduit that will run down the side of my house, this is actually an HOA requirement but they could opt to have me do it at my expense.
Here are some pics from today’s work, the panels arrive on site tomorrow, 54 * 205 watt panels for a whopping 11-thousand watts of pure green power!
Jan 27th, 2010- DAY 3
Work today continued on the roof rails, they were finally mounted to the stand offs and the racks started to take shape. That’s really about all the work that was done today, it’s a ton of work but tomorrow I’ve been told that the real hardware will arrive on site and more electrical will be done.
Enjoy the pics!
Jan 28th, 2010- DAY 4
The panels are here!!! Today work shifted back to mostly electrical, panel wiring, cabling from the inverters back to the main panels and starting the runs from the roof down to the inverters.
The big thrill to day is seeing 54 Evergreen Solar 205 Watt PV panels on my back patio, the project is reaching it’s peak because the panels will likely hit the roof tomorrow and start getting wired into the inverter panels.
The end is near and here are today’s pics!
Jan 29th, 2010- DAY 5
Today was the day I’ve been waiting for! The crew doubled in size today, they manged to pick up another crew that was actually working on a neighbors house and they came over and helped to hoist the panels into position, screw them down and wire them together.
The job went exceptionally fast, one guy took care of prepping the panels, another hoisted them to the garage roof where the panel was used by either the crew working over the garage or the crew working on the roof, they were done in less than 1 hour!
Again I can’t say enough about Pablo my foreman, he really did an amazing job in keeping me informed and I didn’t bother them too much so he had no real issue with taking a few extra minutes to explain to me what was next in the process.
The guys really went out of their way, they purchased the paint colors for my house from the original paint vendor and didn’t try to do a match from Home Depot or Lowes, this in my opinion was huge, but they even went so far as to paint over an area on my house where a woodpecker had made his mark and I had to fill in the area with an emergency stucco repair, I could have and actually asked if I could borrow their ladder for 5 minutes to do it, before I was done getting ready, the area was painted! Just an amazing crew, I really can’t say enough good about them.
After everything was wired in, they flipped the breakers on the inverters and after about 5 minutes they syncronized to the grid, one inverter was producing about 2500 watts and the other about 4500 watts, easily more than enough for me to run my house without buying any power from APS my local utility! Pablo in fact stated that my meter should be running backwards and when I took the picture, he was right, the arrow was pointing away from the lightbulb I had free, pure energy! We even generated about 6kw hours before we shut the system down.
Sadly I can’t leave it on until 2 more inspections, sometime next week the county should be here to certify the work and then after that the utility will come on site, verify the system is safe to tie into their grid and I will at that point be left with the system turned on or Solarcity will have to come back and fix whatever APS isn’t happy with. The estimate is about 2 to as many as 4 weeks before all this is done.
Either way, I’m super happy with the work these guys did, and am super happy to have 54 black beauties on my roof ready to save me money!
PV Install – One Last Look
After the guys were done yesterday I had to run to a meeting and didn’t have a chance to take some final pics so this morning after I got moving I took the walk around the Lombana compound and grabbed some final pics of the install.
I noticed some amazing detail that the installers did that I hadn’t noticed yesterday, not only did they paint the conduit that goes up the side of my house, they also painted the conduit that is on my tile roof to make it blend in! The details that these guys did was nothing short of astounding!
I have to say that I’ve achieved a new level of nerdness! I have my Droid setup so that every time I use the web browser, the default home page is my Solar City account so that I can see how much power my panels are producing!
Lately I’ve found myself checking my power meter to see if it’s running backwards and my production is exceeding my consumption, since I’m using the air conditioner more in the daytime while working from home, I want to make sure that running 2 computers, plus the AC and usually the TV on CNN, that I’m still able to do this using the power of the sun.
Happy to report that my system has no problems keeping up with my daily demand. I did however find that while cooking a chicken dinner in the oven last week, that I had to turn off the ceiling fans in the bedrooms to get my meter to spin backwards. Reality, the fans should not have been on in the first place since I wasn’t in any of those rooms, so I wasn’t being very green
Thankfully the chicken came out great, my daughter was happy with dinner and I found that I can cook dinner at 4pm and have the TV on in the living room without using any power from APS!