More About Solar Panels, and Where You Put Them.

As you know, I have solar panels.  I have 20 of them.  Although I make more electricity than I use every day, and FPL says that my acknowledged negative usage results in a bill of $0.36 a day (I'm not sure how that math works), my bills are now creeping up from $10.05 a month to more than $20 a month.  I'm not home.  I haven't been home since May 2.  No one else is there.  The thermostat is higher than it is when I'm home.  But the bill I get for selling electricity to FPL keeps rising.  Maybe there's something more than math going on.

My daughter and son-in-law live in Massachusetts, which is where I am now.  Because I got solar panels, and they worked nearly rationally well to minimize costs for a couple of years, my daughter and son-in-law got solar panels, too.  They got 14 of them.  The contractor who sells you the solar panels shows you some graph, chart, or list that alleges how much your solar panels will produce, and you either do or don't believe the contractor.  Generally, you find someone you expect to be able to believe, because they're in the solar panel business, and you're not, and you sort of take their advice.  Hence, my daughter's and son-in-law's 14 solar panels, which someone told them would lead to some advantage.  And those 14 solar panels have in fact led to an advantage.  Since my daughter and son-in-law got solar panels, their electric bills have been $0.  Part of the pitch was that they were supposed to get a monthly check from the local electric company, and they have gotten a monthly check, but it's been for considerably less than was predicted.  (Nobody communicates in a way that you could ever say anything was promised.  Predicted or suggested is as good as you're going to get.)

The reason FPL knows I produce more than I use every day is a two-way meter, which turns in one direction when I'm buying, and in the other direction when I'm selling.  This is called net metering, although someone's finger is on the scale, so it's unclear what the net flow should produce, in terms of a bill.  The fact that although they know I'm selling more than I'm buying every day, but they still think I should owe them $0.36 a day, and then they charge me double that, is the special song and dance and frank cheating that is part of having solar panels in Florida.

My daughter and son-in-law have the same net metering I do.  And even though they have fewer panels than I do, and produce less electricity than I do, and run their AC much colder than I do in the summer, their electric bill is $0.

If you're going to get solar panels, it appears you should put them in Massachusetts.  You'll get a much better deal.