I am now in my tenth year on Georgia Power’s Simple Solar plan which charges me about 10% more than regular customers and all of my electricity is solar. Sort of. Really I am buying Renewable Energy Credits (RECs), which are an accounting gimmick so that you can buy and sell solar energy credits. The RECs are purchased from someone producing solar energy and then all of the energy is dumped into the grid supposedly. It is like buying a carbon offset. But if a big company wants to run its factory on solar and builds a 1 megawatt solar plant to run it, it would probably say it is running the factory on solar, but I bet it would still sell the RECs. So it is kind of second hand solar. RECs are fairly cheap to buy which is why I am not paying that much. Still something. Georgia Power’s mix of electricity sources is now up to 7% solar, which is better than in the past, but not great.
They also have a program called Community Solar where you pay $24 per month to buy the output of a 1000 watt block of solar cells. Georgia Power then lets you reduce your power bill by the number of kilowatt-hours your cells produce, which they say on average is 165 kwh per month, but can vary from 115 to 215 kwh. At 19 cents per kwh, which seems to be what Georgia Power charges now based on my last bill, 165 kwh is $31.35, so theoretically you can save money, but if the month is cloudy or it is winter with shorter days, then you might not cover it. It is intriguing enough that I went ahead and signed up for it just now.
I don’t know that doing this means that Georgia Power is really building any more solar panels than they would have otherwise. They were probably building some number anyway because they have to or got some kind of tax credit, and they are just letting me pay rent for something they already had.
They used to have a program where they would buy your solar energy and your RECs, but then you still had to pay for all of your home’s power. That never seemed like a great plan for the home owner. At one time it was a thing that your panels would reduce your overall consumption and if they were producing more than you were consuming, your meter would run backwards and supposedly you could come out ahead, though your consumption at night would probably keep you from getting a check instead of paying a bill each month.