We live in the San Diego area, where we have the highest energy prices in the US. Peak period during the summer (4 pm until 9 pm weekdays) is now over $0.80/kWh 😳! About $0.50 off peak and $0.15 from midnight until 6 am. I completed the electrification of our home a couple of years ago with a variable speed HP and zoned air distribution, HP water heater and HP clothes dryer. We were on propane for those appliances before. Leased a Kona EV, which was just replaced with an Ioniq 5. I also added 2.5 kW to our previous 5kW PV system, and added a 20 kWh storage battery. Our system produces about 75% of what we use but I can “arbitrage” the Time of Use rates to my advantage. We run completely off the PV and battery during the peak period, and sell a lot of that $0.50 and $0.80 electricity back to SDGE when the PV is overproducing. We pay our electric bill once a year (three weeks ago) and it was a total of about $200 for entire year. No more propane and no more gasoline.
Way ta go! I don't have a heat pump clothes dryer. But I do have a hybrid water heater (heat pump water heater) and a variable speed heat pump for the home with a variable speed air handler.
One trick I did with the water heater was duct air in from our attic. Thus when the water heater runs it doesn't have to run as long to pull heat from its incoming air because the air is usually really warm (blazing hot at times). Another thing I did with it is utilize the cold air blowing out of the water heater during the 7-8 months of the year that the outside temp is warm enough to have to cool the home. I installed an air receiver in the floor near the water heater so that the cold air coming from the water heater is picked up by the HVAC and spread throughout the home (thus the variable speed HVAC doesn't have to work as hard cooling the home air during the 2-3 hours the water heater runs). In the winter months I flip a lever by the water heater and the cold air is ducted into the attic (so my home heating doesn't fight the cold air coming from the water heater).
When I bought the I5 a year ago I upgraded our solar. We now have 20kW solar panels, 18kW continuous inverter capacity, and 92kWh of battery storage. We don't sell power to the grid because there's a default monthly fee added that would make me pay about $130/month more just for the privilege of them buying back power from me for about 1/5th the amount I pay them (in other words, no net metering). By default, we don't have time of day rate plans. Thus, I'm officially paying 12.4384 cents/kWh any time of day. But after they add the riders and state tax (most notably the energy rider when our power utility has to pay more for natural gas to run the natural gas fueled plants after the government reduced our natural gas supply, which was after the government forced our utility to switch from coal to "clean burning" natural gas, but I digress), in my last bill the true cost per kWh was 15.7871 cents (and that was after first subtracting $15.60 in flat fees and taxes charged no matter how much power you pull from the grid). So my power bill averages $75/month (more in the winter months, less in the other months). No natural gas bill. And almost no cost at the pump (I fill up my ICE pickup maybe 3 times per year). That's for an all-electric, two story home with 2,300 sq ft of living space and driving the I5 for 26K miles per year (let's call it charging at home for about 23K of those miles), with my wife retired and me quasi-retired working from home a lot (keeping the house at 68F during the day in hot Alabama summers). Basically, the solar provides 80% of the power we need through the year (less in the winter, more in the other months). So for my May 24 power bill, it was $54.91 for pulling 249kWh from the grid. After subtracting the $15.60 in flat fees, that means $39.31 of the bill was for usage. Pulling 249kWh from the grid means in the end I paid 15.7871 cents per kWh. Since my inverters reporting me using 1,916.5 kWh during that billing period, it means the solar system saved me from having to buy 1,667.5 kWh from the grid (87% of my power was free from solar). Which saved me $263.25 that month. There's nothing in the math about making money selling the grid, it's just pure savings on not having to pull as much from the grid. Combine that with saving $111.18 by no longer having a natural gas bill (after subtracting some power usage added by heating my home and water with power now), and $435 in gasoline savings (after adding some power usage to charge the I5), it totals $757 in energy savings for May.
I am, however, in the process of applying to sell power to the grid. There's another fee I can choose instead of the heinous $5.41 X kW name plate capacity per month fee. The other fee is based on the demand (highest amount of kW pulled from the grid) during the billing period. Thanks to the data export of my inverters recorded in 5-minute candles showing power coming in and out in all data points (from solar panels, to and from batteries, from grid, and total power load no matter where the power is coming from at that point in time), a homemade C# app to dump all that data into a homemade SQL Server database, another homemade C# app to cycle through the past 12 billing cycles of data and calculate what each bill would have been with the different rate plans and fees my utility offers, and a handful of SQL queries, I've determined that the power buyback plan with the demand fee option would have saved me another $350 or so per year, with no power bills from April to November and the remaining 4 months total $550. So when I start selling power to the grid, we'll call it averaging less than $50/month to live in a comfortable cool 2-story 2,300 sq ft home, joy ride in the I5 22K miles local driving per year, and keep sharing a hot tub with the missus as much as we want.
Even if I don't do the power buy back option, and assuming only a reasonable 3% inflation rate on the energy prices I avoid, I'm looking at the overall project paying for itself 9 years from now (10 years of owning the I5, 11 years after I installed the first phase of solar and converted my nat gas appliances to electric to begin this large energy project). That includes paying interest on the HELOC I took out to pay for this overall energy project, and interest on the I5 payments. The energy and car portion of my budget feels like it's still year 2019 (what I was paying for my power bill then + natural gas bill + gas at the pump + $400/month into a car savings account to repair or replace old used ICE cars with another old used ICE car) is how much I use now for my HELOC payment + I5 payment + tiny power bill. Because my payments exceed my year 2019 expenses, I pull the excess from the HELOC so that my budget doesn't feel like it's paying that extra. Every year when I get back the IRS tax credits, I pay extra down on the HELOC which makes my HELOC payments go down and give it more available credit for me to pull from to help me make the I5 payments. 3 years from now when the I5 is paid off I'll keep using the $400/month car savings for 3 more years to help pay down the HELOC, and after that put the $400/month into a car savings account to eventually replace the I5's battery (and whatever other repairs will be needed). While I'll keep paying down the HELOC + tiny power bill with the budget amount I was used to paying in year 2019 (basically it's like I've completely done away with energy inflation in my budget) so that mine and my wife's retirement investments can keep growing tax free in our Roth accounts while everybody else will keep complaining about having to go back to work to pay for sky high energy costs. When the HELOC is paid off, I've already told my wife at that point I'll keep making "energy payments" like it's still year 2019 by putting that amount into an investment account similar to our mutual funds in our retirement accounts (though they won't grow tax free because I will no longer be working). I'll one day use that money to repair or replace the solar equipment or high efficient home appliances or eventually replace the I5 with another EV. Even if my wife and I live another 30 years (we're in our 50's), the energy portion of my budget is liable to feel like it's year 2019 forever with no sky high inflation energy raiding our retirement investments.
