Two Years With No Net Utility Bill!

Last month we marked the two year point with our utility supplier.

The array has been functioning for 25 months but the bills lag the generation. So last month we’ve now gone two years with an average heating and electric bill of zero.

How does that work? Well, it starts with the Solar Currents plan that was in place in 2010. It gave us .10 per KWh for generating the electrical energy and then also let us use what we generated without cost. Almost like getting paid twice.

And we have gotten paid. For the first two years we generated more income from the solar array than we consumed with combined electric and gas bill. So we have actually gotten checks from DTE when they balance out the year.

Then we do ~90% of our heating with wood. (Because we like to, not because we need to.) The wood costs us about what we have gotten paid by DTE.

The net result is no utility bills. (Or a net zero utility bill.)

More importantly, it has been a fun two years, and, we’ve hit break-even on our Return On Investment (ROI)

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