Solar Meltdown

We got solar panels in November of 2018. It was exciting! Our power company, the universally loved PG&E here in Northern California, finally made the decision easy for us after we had a $600+ bill that summer. More on them later.

Now, when you get solar, you are excited about making electricity instead of having to buy it. You get a cool app on your phone that shows you the real-time solar production happening on your roof. You can see that the panels in the direct sunlight are pumping out 1.56 kWh each! You have no idea how much 1.56 kWh is – or even what it is – and you have no idea how each individual kWh translates to your electric bill, but you’re pretty sure it’s a really good thing!

If you think that PG&E will tell you how each kWh translates to your bill, you are wrong. They say that they are showing you on your bill, complete with numbers and charts, but what they are really showing you is Chinese algebra with no equals signs and no dollar amounts. More on them later.

Anyway, your electricity bills continue to come every month, but now they are much, much, much lower. You are happy. Eventually, you start to see a dollar figure show up in the corner of the bill labeled “Expected True-up Amount.” On your one-year anniversary of getting solar, your true-up amount is due. This is the difference between the amount of electricity you used and the amount you produced.

The true-up is the one thing on your bill expressed in dollars, and it is not negative. You owe them money. And you owe them more money than you think you should because you have a LOT of solar panels on your roof, and they were not cheap. This is when you find out that PG&E pays you about $0.0000000023 for every kWh you produce, but charges you roughly $756.00 for every kWh they send you. More on them later.

You go through another year of checking the app and getting happy about how many kWh’s you’re making when it’s sunny, cursing the clouds and rain, and watching your estimated true-up number rise and fall through the seasons, betting yourself on where it will land come solar anniversary time.

After a few years, you realize the true-up is staying fairly steady at a few hundred bucks, and you check the app less and less often. And if you got solar in 2018, by 2024 you hardly ever check the app, and basically ignore the true-up number.

You ignore it until three days ago when you were online paying your PG&E bill and you glanced over to see the Estimated True-up Amount they are showing is three times higher than your mortgage payment. Umm, what?

You initially think that something went wrong over at PG&E. Maybe your SmartMeter broke and they can’t see how much your solar panels are producing. But then you go outside and see that the SmartMeter seems to be on and working just fine.

Then you grab your phone and go to check the app that you haven’t looked at since you can’t remember when. The app is requiring you to log in and that’s when you vaguely remember looking at the app a month or so ago and seeing the same login screen and saying to yourself, “I have no idea what my login info is. I’ll check that later when I’m near my password list.”

When you finally get the app open, you see that it is not showing any production at all yesterday, or the day before. The app talks to the panels through a gateway that is located in an electrical box under the solar panel shutoff switch. You get a screwdriver and open that box to see that there is no power at all to the gateway. You check the circuit breakers, but a visual inspection shows they’re all in the ON position.

That’s when you call the solar installation company and they start walking you through the troubleshooting procedure. After a few questions, they recommend turning the whole system off and back on at the main breaker. When you go to touch the main breaker switch, it falls loosely away from the ON position to the middle “tripped” position.

Holy…

When you flip the breaker OFF and then ON, the gateway immediately comes to life, and your SmartMeter suddenly changes direction from “Receiving” to “Delivering.”

Son of a…

And on that day, September 30^th, 94 degrees at 3:00pm, you go back through the app and finally figure out that your solar panel main breaker tripped off on July 11^th and 1:26pm.

Mother…

Not only was my giant solar array just an ugly roof decoration for over two and a half months, but it was off and useless at the worst possible time – during the hottest two and a half months that California has seen in a very long time. We had multiple record-breaking heatwaves when our A/C ran all day and most of the night, without a single solar cell on my roof doing anything about it.

Now, I know that there are more than a few places I can go look whenever I want to make sure my solar panels are on and functioning, and I’m well aware of the fact that I failed to check any of them during probably the two and a half most critical solar power months in our system’s history.

But here’s my problem with you, PG&E. You know I have solar. You know I used to send you electricity every month. You know I didn’t abandon the house because I’m still paying my bills and sucking down kWh’s at a furious pace. So why in the hell is there not a note in bold at the top of my August bill saying, “HEY! YOU DIDN’T PRODUCE A SINGLE kWh LAST MONTH!!”?

Don’t bother answering – I already know how much you’re looking forward to sending me this year’s true-up bill.

Again, I know I only have myself – and possibly a crappy main breaker – to blame. So why am I complaining, you ask? I’m not complaining. I’m trying to prevent this from happening to anyone else.

If this cautionary tale saves even one of you from the same fate, then it… would be amazing if you considered sharing some of those savings with me so I can pay my horrendous true-up bill.

Thanks in advance!

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2024 Marc Schmatjen

 

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Total Eclipse on the Chart

I’m not sure if you freaked out on Monday or not like I did, but as it turns out the sun was not shutting off like I initially suspected. It was actually the eclipse everyone was talking about. I don’t know about you, but around here it was total eclipse mania on Monday. Suddenly everyone was an eclipse expert, throwing around technical eclipse terms like Path of Totality, ISO Compliant Solar Filters, Chromosphere, and Corona. Here on the west coast, the eclipse happened just after 10 A.M., so in addition to Corona, we used other technical eclipse viewing terms like Mimosa and Bloody Mary.

Unfortunately, we do not live in the path of totality. For any other type of totality, I would count that as a blessing, but for this eclipse, I was disappointed. It was the first time in my life I wished I lived in the path of anything. Our eclipse here in California was non-total, so it didn’t get really dark. It just got kinda gloomy and slightly cooler, as if we were all in Canada for a few minutes.   

For most people outside the path of totality, Monday was just a normal work day with a slightly unique (and possibly momentarily terrifying) event in the middle. If you were in the path of totality, however, the eclipse became almost a national holiday. NASA should think about renaming it the Path of Totally Gonna Skip Work and Have an Eclipse Party.

Many folks were confused on the difference between a solar and lunar eclipse, and which one was occurring. I can answer that question. A solar eclipse, which we experienced Monday, is when the moon passes in front of the sun. A lunar eclipse is when the plumber bends down to look under the sink and you shield your eyes with your hand to avoid being subjected to his exposed butt crack.

Lunar eclipses, unfortunately for everyone involved, are not rare, even though belts are sold at every clothing store in the world, all truck stops, and even some gas stations.

As far as solar eclipses go, they are far more infrequent. There have been conflicting reports, based on mimosa intake, of when the last total solar eclipse was over the United States, and when the next one will be. I have no idea, but I know who does – a man named Fred Espenak, who is a total astronomical badass.

I don’t know Fred personally, and if I ever met him, I probably wouldn’t be able to communicate with him effectively, since he is obviously a higher-order human than myself. One five-minute conversation would likely melt my puny brain, so it’s probably best if I stay here in California, and NASA continues to keep Fred securely and safely away from regular humans.

Who is Fred, you ask? He’s the guy that gave us charts and graphs of all the past, present, and future eclipses on NASA’s special eclipse website.

Having never met him, how do I know that Fred is the space-math super genius that I’m making him out to be? One simple sentence at the bottom of the main web page:

“All eclipse calculations are by Fred Espenak, and he assumes full responsibility for their accuracy.”

He assumes full responsibility for their accuracy!? That’s a rather bold and refreshing statement in an era when no one assumes responsibility for anything at all, up to and including their own actions. I mean, NASA probably told Fred that they assume no responsibility for his vehicle, or any items left in his vehicle being lost or stolen when he parks at work. Does that bother Fred? Hell no. Fred just laughs and assumes full responsibility for the accuracy of his calculations.

After Fred moved any valuables to the trunk of his Camry (he’s no fool), he went to work and gave us solar eclipse maps and times from 1851 to 2100, detailed enough to know whether or not the next moon’s shadow is going to touch the last parking space at the Circle K at Ficklin and Niles in Tuscola, Illinois, just outside of Chicken Bristle. And by the way, the Circle K does not assume any responsibility for your vehicle in their lot, either. Especially on eclipse days.

You should see Fred’s columns of times and coordinates for each eclipse. Seriously. Please look at them and tell me what they mean. I don’t have the foggiest idea.

What I do know is that Fred Espenak, NASA/GSFC Emeritus (whatever that means), is the one person left in the United States that assumes full responsibility for anything, so I’m going to trust his eclipse calculations.

I mean, I kinda have to. How would I know if they were wrong? I guess I could travel to the middle of the South Pacific Ocean for the next total solar eclipse on July 2, 2019 at 19:24:07 to check his accuracy, but I really don’t see that happening. I’m not sure you can get good Bloody Marys out there.

By the way, I assume no responsibility whatsoever for the accuracy of this column.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2017 Marc Schmatjen

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