Solar Overproduction

With three decades under my belt in the electrical industry, I’m always striving to better understand customer perceptions as it relates to the services they receive. I’ve taken this drive and weaved it into the very fabric of Peak Power Solutions so that we can constantly be relatable to our customers, while providing a level of expertise that brings peace of mind without intimidating or confusing those we serve. As we dive into today’s blog topic of overproduction, this concept became even more prevalent as I considered a recent trip to one of the big warehouse stores (I’ll refrain from mentioning the name).

While standing among a series of lines at the check out area of this particular warehouse store, I gazed into the shopping cart at the large boxes of everything and thought about my family’s needs. I thought, “We probably won’t need to come here anymore once we are empty-nesters.” There is a certain demographic among the shoppers of the large warehouse stores (I am one of them), seeking to get mass quantities of bread, macaroni and cheese, and/or cereal to fulfill the consumptive needs of the greatest number of people.

All of this got me thinking about the concept over solar overproduction. In the clearest of terms, overproduction in the solar world refer to the excess generation that can’t be used for the present consumptive needs of your home and thus is sent out to the grid. The utility will provide you with overproduction credits for that amount and will be used as a contributing metric at your true up date (anniversary of your solar system activation). By blending the overproduction credits with the amount of consumed power from the utility (you’ll buy back power during non-generating hours), the resulting outcome is your net energy bill. More to come on true up in a subsequent blog entry.

What did this all have to do with the big warehouse store experience? Well, those stores tend to be for a season of life. If I was to look back on our finances later in life, I’m sure I would see a lot more dollars flowing to these types of stores while we had a house full of kids. When designing a solar system for our Peak Power Solutions customers, we do the opposite.

We want to design a system that gives the optimum use of your overproduction credits based on your load profile, or the tendencies of how and when you use your power, and blend it with the power you are forced to buy from the utility. Our guiding light is to help you make the most sound financial decision that will yield consistent outcomes for the life of the solar system, and not just size the solar system based off a peak KW demand that you happened to reach during a short period of the summer.