Solar Electric - Payback 2/4

California utilities now have "tiered" pricing, where the consumers who use more electricity pay much more per unit. By installing a properly sized solar electric system, consumers can produce some of the electricity they consume. The net result is that they purchase only the cheaper base price electricity from the utility.

In the graphs below, the amount produced by the solar electric system is shown in green.

* Tiered rate pricing penalizes large users most with marginal costs up to $.44/kWh. Solar offsets highest tier usage first, making the solar customer look like a smaller user, with marginal costs as low as $.11/kWh.