By Karen McConnaughey
We haven’t gotten our first bill yet. It doesn’t come until the end of October, so we don’t have an update on costs, but we will hopefully bring that information to you in the November newsletter. Cross your fingers! Bill's been checking our meter every day though, and even in the rainy season, we're building up credits. I think I'm going to enjoy the hot month of May a lot more now!
However, we did get some updates from some of our readers regarding their experiences with solar energy in the Lake Chapala area.
Karen, I loved reading your article in the September newsletter on Joys of Solar Energy... especially the picture of the enclosure for your new meter.
We've been looking into solar too but from a little different angle since we're renting where we live. The house we own in Riberas uses very little electricity so we haven't thought about using PV there. The house we're renting has been in the DAC for at least a year. We moved here in the middle of a billing period so we started monitoring our usage which was about 7 to 8kWh a day. When we finally got the CFE bill, it was for $3500 MXN. Yikes, we were used to $400 MXN per bill in the house we rented in San Antonio. This house does have a pool but we were amazed. The former renters must have had every light and TV on 24/7. We did talk to the former renters as they were moving out and ask to see the electric bill and questioned them about being in the DAC - they hadn't a clue what that was, obviously.
Interestingly the next bill was misread by CFE and we had to take a picture of the meter and take it CFE to get it corrected. We were still being billed at the DAC rate so we only got a $1000 MXN reduction.
When we moved in, we were told the owner wouldn't allow the CFE contract for the house to be changed out of his name so we started learning about other ways to get out of the DAC including learning all we could about solar to present ideas to our owner who was scheduled to come from Seattle in August for a visit. Once he arrived and we explained our situation, he was quite willing to let us change the contract into our name - and to his credit wanted to learn all he could to understand the ins and outs about the DAC. Therefore, we all went to CFE together to learn and change the contract. We were told the magic number to stay out of the DAC is 500kWh per billing period and once you're in the DAC, it takes three successive billing periods (six months) below the 500kWh total before they'll reduce the rate back to the standard sliding scale and discount.
Now the solar part. Jason recently mentioned that they could have a PV installation that we could take with us should we move and the owner didn't want the system. So we got ideas from eSun and e2 and found a group in Guadalajara with some even better ideas. We've been looking into solar hot water too, and I think we'll probably do water first. The other group from Guadalajara, Calentadores Solares de México SA de CV, can do both PV and water just like e2 and eSun but they have an idea that would only provide about 2.6kWh a day that would easily keep us below the DAC and use the pool pump a bit more and nice breathing room for only $4100 USD.
Thanks for your article with and experience with your installation. We look forward to hearing how it all works out. I'll let you know how we end up.
Abracitos
Brad & Mary (Focus on Mexico alumni)
Alumni Peg & Lea wrote to us after we asked about their set-up since we knew they used eSun too:
Hi Karen and Bill,
We had our eight panels installed last Sept. It has now been almost a year and since we never had a CFE meter installed before we got them we really can't speak to the savings, but we have been in the black ever since we got them and our bi-directional meter. Last I looked we were 104 kilowatt hours ahead, but that was before all these cloudy days and extra people in the house. The guys at eSun suggested we could get by on six panels and stay in the low rate, but we wanted to produce all of our needs and since the converter could support up to 10 panels we went with eight. We love it and if we could, we would get an electric car to run off of it too, but that will have to wait.
Abrazos, Lea
So, obviously, we're all pretty excited here with our choices in the Lake Chapala area. Solar energy is here to stay, it's getting cheaper month by month as more people jump on the bandwagon and helps us all, not just those of us who install it. We all need to think about our carbon footprint!
Karen
McConnaughey:
Operations Manager for FocusOnMexico.
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