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Just received another price adjustment from AGL. 12 months ago it was general usage at $0.343 and solar Feed-in at $0.142. Then it went to $0.378 and Feed-in at $0.124. Now it is $0.395 and Feed-in at $0.080. Had a look around and most of the offers are around this and a few lower that state this offer my change at any time. They do offer a "shoulder rate" between 10am-3pm but that is of course when my solar is supplying all of my power.
May have to have another look at batteries. I have 6.6 of solar. What are your thoughts on batteries at this stage T1.?
Going by last years usage of 3450 kWh used and 7881 solar returned power still costs us very little but I hate AGL screwing us and it will only get worse.
Cheers John
PS. Alinta are the cheapest at the moment. Anyone using them?

Will check our next bill John as we are with AGL but locked in under the original state government solar rebate. I do remember that a while back AGL dropped their contribution and introduced the solar daily charge as well. Cheers Robert

Just sold the house where we were still getting 52 cents, so that is going to hurt. Looking at putting in a system here as well.

The new owners will be disappointed when they don't get the 52C.

George

John I had to put in a new inverter late last year and was talking with my solar bloke. He said while I was on the fixed government return gorget about batteries. If the government should drop the rate then go battery. My daughter and husband put in a system and battery and say it was the best thing to do. Cut their power cost right down and they may now look at a bigger or second battery.

Just a bit I remembered earlier cheers

PS How is Faye going mate?

Last yrs useage plug what went back to the grid = 11331kWh, but how much actually went straight from solar to the house is unknown.
If you are getting 0.80 cents per kWh, I won't mess with the solar in any way because they will cut that rate right back. However, if that should really read 0.08 cents per kWh, then I'd think real serious about an off grid battery system and only sell the excess to the grid.
What we really need to know is on average, how much power you use per 24hr period, so that will require meter reading when it's raining all day and no solar is being produced. You would actually need to turn the solar off for that 24hr period to get an accurate reading, but still use appliances etc as yo would normally.
From there we can estimate the battery capacity required to hold you over for 60hrs (2 1/2 days) with zero solar input, that way you could live comfortably off the solar and batteries without needing to access the grid at all. From there you can determine just how much went back into the grid over 12 mths and determine if that covers the poles and wires hire per quarter that is the base charge on the bill.

T1 Terry

Yeah George I guess he will be disappointed but thats not my problem.
We have not lived there for the last 2.5 years and have been getting credits of about $1K every billing period.
So, initial cost wise, we are so far in front it is not funny.

He rang this morning, one of his delivery trucks drove right through the underground effluent dispersal area, chopped it to pieces, wanted to know how to stop the water.

DOH, turn off the pump !

Hi. Yes sorry. That should read .8 cents Fixed now.
Try to use most of the appliances during solar input time from 10am to 4pm. The big user after this time is the reverse cycle ducted air-con from late afternoon until 10pm.
I can see the power companies will poop in their own nest with rate increases as more people will do the sums on installing batteries.
Cheers John

The ducted reverse cycle air con, is it single phase or 3 phase? It can still be done if it is 3 phase, you just need a min of 3 inverters linked with the 3 phase enabling harness, depending on the load per phase, maybe all the single phase circuits can be split up across the three inverters as well. If not, the systems can also handle multiple inverters on any single phase as well as the 3 phase running in the background. The off grid inverters available these days are simply amazing as far as what they can do at the same time ....

T1 Terry

Here is a sample of our solar production and usage. Exp= exported by supplier, Imp= imported to supplier

Click to enlarge George