Plenty of our clients zero out their electric bill with solar. The real challenge is mastering PECO’s time-of-use plan, which requires shifting when you use power and when you sell power. If you do it right, you don’t avoid paying a bill — you earn money.
I pulled up our family’s energy bill and let my 11-year-old, Mira, see if she could understand it. Here’s our conversation, lightly edited. The short version is that PECO credited us $254!
Mira: Wait — our bill was zero? We’re making money? Micah: We are. PECO credited us $254 instead of charging us. We could’ve taken a check instead.
Mira: So how’d we do it? Micah: It comes down to a really smart system and good timing. The system is solar panels, a home battery, a smart electrical panel, and an EV charger. The timing is what PECO calls Time-of-Use (TOU), where electricity costs different amounts depending on the hour, and the swing is dramatic. “Peak power” (2-6 p.m., when everyone’s home) — costs about six times more than “super off-peak” overnight (12-6 a.m.). Our system allows us to take full advantage of these different rates. During “peak,” we run the whole house on solar energy stored in our battery, so we buy nothing at the high rate. At the same time, we sell our solar straight to the grid at that high peak rate. And we charge the EV overnight, when power’s cheapest. Same electricity everyone else uses; we just control when we use it and when we sell it.
Mira: But what is peak? Micah: It’s when the most people are using power at once. High demand, highest price. Supply and demand.
Mira: Because that’s when people are getting home from work? I get home from school at three. Micah: Exactly, right in the priciest window. On our plan, peak runs about 32 cents a unit, off-peak about 7.5 cents, and super off-peak overnight about a nickel.* That’s why the battery matters: it covers the house during peak so we’re not buying at the high rate, and can sell all the solar production during those hours at the highest price.
Mira: So the battery just saves the extra power? Micah: That’s the heart of it. It lets us use or sell our solar when it’s worth the most, not the second it’s made.
Mira: The bill says $388, then $202. Why is one half the other? Micah: The $388 is everything we’d banked so far. The $202 is just this month — our system switched on last winter, so now that it’s sunny we bank almost as much in one month as we did all winter.
Mira: So how’d we get the $254? Micah: Every May, PECO settles up and cashes you out. Ours came to a $254 credit. The $0 bill, and then some.
Curious whether your home could do the same? Get a quote at solar-states.com/star.
Micah Gold-Markel is the founder of Solar States, a Philadelphia-based solar and storage installer.
