Solar on Evan Hoffman

Why Is My PSE&G Bill Higher? Exploring the CBC Charge

Sat, 22 Nov 2025 23:49:54 +0000

The author received a PSE&G bill for $30.38, higher than expected. Investigating, they discovered a new Customer Benefit Contribution (CBC) charge, aimed at covering social program costs for net-metered solar customers. This charge could lead to significant annual expenses, despite minimal grid usage, causing frustration over the unexpected added cost.

One Year of Real Data From My Solar and PowerWall System

Tue, 11 Nov 2025 09:24:38 +0000

On November 8, 2025, I marked the one-year anniversary of my home solar panels. Installed by Empower, the system includes 36 solar panels and two Tesla PowerWall batteries. Overall, it generated 17,122 kWh while my usage was 18,644 kWh, resulting in reduced utility bills. I find the system beneficial, despite minor issues.

Solar Energy Update: My Experience After 6 Months

Sat, 10 May 2025 08:57:08 +0000

It’s now been 6 months since my rooftop solar panels were brought online and started producing power so I figured it was a good time for an update. So far I haven’t had any problems with the system at all and am very satisfied.

Below are charts of weekly total kWh, blue is pure solar generation, green is power grid net draw/return, and yellow is how much the house actually uses (load):

My First Net Zero Bill with Solar Power

Thu, 03 Apr 2025 03:54:34 +0000

I recently got my PSE&G bill for Feb 20th to March 20th and it was $15.30. Looking into it I saw that my billed kilowatt-hour (kWh) for this period was 0 - zero! The $15.30 charge is from PSE&G’s $0.54/day charge to be connected to the grid plus some taxes, so this is as cheap as it can possibly get while still being on the grid. I was actually surprised to get to net zero this early in the year, I figured it would take another couple months of high-insolation to build up the energy credits, so this was pretty cool.

No Grid Draw for 20 Hours: A Solar Success Story

Mon, 24 Feb 2025 09:32:37 +0000

Solar, battery, grid for Feb 23, 2024

Above is a chart of solar generation (orange), grid draw/return (yellow), and battery charge percentage (red, right Y-axis) for yesterday, February 23, 2025. I was surprised to see basically no draw from the electrical grid from ~8:00 AM on 2/23 until 4:30 AM on 2/24 - nearly 20 hours.

I’m really curious to see when I’ll make it to a full 24 hours - possibly within the next month! Summer will definitely be interesting since there’s a lot more hours of sun, but also much higher baseline load in my house due to air conditioning.

Powerwalls Achieve 100% Charge from Solar Energy

Mon, 27 Jan 2025 17:50:02 +0000

Today was the first day of 2025 that the Powerwalls charged to 100% just from solar power. Once they got to full power, excess power was sent back into the grid. Check out the graph below:

Power production for Jan 27, 2025

Sunrise was at ~7 AM and the sky was pretty clear all day today. The Powerwall got to 100% around 2:48 PM and didn’t start discharging until around 3:50 PM. This is pretty cool since it’s only been 37 days since the Winter Solstice. I didn’t really expect to generate this much power until much closer to Spring.

Snowstorm Impact on Solar Production: 5 days Later

Fri, 24 Jan 2025 14:08:37 +0000

It’s been 5 days since the “big” snowstorm that covered the solar panels and today is the first day the temperature has really gotten above freezing:

Temperature for the past week (Jan 17 to Jan 25, 2025)

I’m finally starting to get back to some reasonable solar production:

Solar production - Jan 24, 2025

Looking back over the past 10 days, this is still significantly below pre-storm levels:

Snow Day: How much does snow affect solar production?

Mon, 20 Jan 2025 13:28:06 +0000

Panels covered in snow

It snowed yesterday (Jan 19th, 2025) and left a nice layer of snow on the solar panels, so I figured this was a good time to see how snow on the panels affects production. As you might expect, it affects it quite a bit!

Here’s a chart of solar production from last week, on Jan 14 2025:

One Month Later: Analyzing My PSEG Bill With Solar Panels

Mon, 30 Dec 2024 14:06:41 +0000

I finally got my first PSEG electric bill that covers a full month since the solar panels were turned on. My bill for the period from November 19th to December 19th was $211.69. I’ll admit that this was a lot higher than I expected, however looking at the actual usage it makes sense.

The main reason for the high bill is likely my Powerwall configuration, which was setup to fully charge the batteries during super off-peak (after 10 PM) and then dump the power back into the grid during peak times, to offset the most expensive power usage. This actually did work, and I ended up with $0 peak usage and 236 kWh peak credits banked with the utility. However, my super off-peak usage was naturally way up since that’s when I was charging the batteries, and also charging my EV.

Solar Panel Installation on Long Island: My Summer 2024 Experience

Mon, 11 Nov 2024 19:01:14 +0000

Intro

This is a writeup of my adventure in getting solar panels installed at my house. I’m writing it in case it’s helpful to other people considering solar.

My story has a (maybe) strange beginning. In April 2024 I was in my yard playing with my dogs when a door-to-door solar salesman saw me and in a moment of weakness I gave him my contact information. He was from a company called NYS Solar and he scheduled a consultation for me with a sales rep. A couple weeks later I met with the sales representative and I wasn’t really sold on it - the costs he quoted didn’t seem to make any sense, and he didn’t provide me anything in writing either, he just showed me some stuff on his ipad. I didn’t get a great feeling from him, but it did make me start considering solar for my home.