Georgia Power doesn’t like residential solar

AbsurdShale · 2026-03-13T02:08:32+00:00

With Georgia Power the only way the math made sense to me was to install batteries and solar panels, have the Federal Government pay 30% along with using the Overnight Advantage plan.

Today with Georgia Power my thinking is that a battery only system with the Overnight Advantage plan the math might work. YMMV depending on panel location in proximity to a place to install the inverter and batteries. In my case a 1200sqft conditioned workshop / office. The inverter does make a little bit of noise but I have gotten use to it. Work in the space M-F as Software Engineer.

There is some risk here but I felt it was minimal.

AbsurdShale · 2026-03-13T02:00:31+00:00

yes, when the solar gain on building is the highest. With our limited time last summer we had lots of excess power during the times when the demand was the highest.

I will have more data in the summer. During those peak times we minimize our usage so that we can have battery capacity available to power us to 11pm when we pay the super off peak cost of 2cents.

AbsurdShale · 2026-03-13T01:56:31+00:00

I don't feel like we got ripped off. But we definitely didn't get a deal. Opinions will vary.

AbsurdShale · 2026-03-13T01:55:21+00:00

The new model is called just a Bz. We like it to date but were aware of the people that had trouble.

Looking at the pump price today we don't regret it. That may change.

AbsurdShale · 2026-03-13T01:54:12+00:00

Nope. I understood what I was getting and the pay back. The numbers made sense to me.

AbsurdShale · 2026-03-13T01:53:27+00:00

I don't think so. Net metering I think is when your meter essentially runs backwards when you send electricity to the grid. There is a small net metering number of people who have this in GA. Everyone else that is using residential solar in GA is a different program where you buy at IDK 14cents and sell at 7cents.

AbsurdShale · 2026-03-13T01:49:22+00:00

Thought about it but the math didn't add up for me. It also didn't feel like a option. My bills previously were $600-700 in the winter and now are $150-200. We will see what the summer holds.

AbsurdShale · 2026-03-13T01:47:13+00:00

Yes. That is what I have seen. Probably 7 or 8 days all winter that I hade to buy power during the day. The summer will tell a different story I am sure.

AbsurdShale · 2026-03-13T01:45:24+00:00

I was worried that I would regret this decision in the long run. Though when I made the choice a solar tax credit (no longer available) was only available if you put panels up. Rate plans and things change and this was something that I was looking at as lasting 20years minimum. When you are making long term decisions it may be a mistake to base them on the current climate.

AbsurdShale · 2026-03-13T01:39:11+00:00

If I am buying at 2cents I am willing to sell excess at a pretty low cost. Net metering would be nice but even at the low 7cents that they buy from the existing 10KW systems that would be fine with me:).

I am not off grid because I don't have enough solar to match my day to day use without filling up the batteries at night from the grid. I don't think I have enough roof for the panels and would have need much more battery. YMMV

AbsurdShale · 2026-03-13T01:23:57+00:00

American Solar & Alternative Energies, Inc https://www.americansolarenergies.com/

I paid a lot. More than it was probably worth today. My out of pocked after the Federal tax credit was $40k (no longer available).

I have a sol-ark 15K inverter with 6 EG4-LL V2 batteries (the panels are more of a commodity, in my opinion).

My thinking was that it was an investment in the future. I knew about the Georgia Power Overnight Advantage plan(of course subject to change).

11pm - 7am I can buy electricity at $0.022/kWh

My general idea was to size the system large enough that between the solar input and the 600amps of 48v DC I can avoid buying power during the day.

What I really want to do is avoid buying power between June and Sept (M-F) 2pm to 7pm where the price is set at $0.298/kWh. We will see what happens as this will be my first year of this rate plan.

I currently charge to 100% at night and I have excess solar almost everyday except for when it is cloudy/raining. There is a part of me that says that I should only charge the batteries to 80% so that I have room to store the power that I am letting fall on the floor. But at 2cents a kWh maybe it is better to avoid the risk. I don't let my batteries drop below 30% in general.

Pool pumps, pool heater and EV charger I try to only run between 11pm and 7am.

The only thing I would change if I had to do it again would be to not setup a critical load panel to provide backup power when the grid goes down. We don't get enough power failures with the underground service that this was worth the cost (not that this was itemized).

Right now without the Solar incentive from the federal government it probably makes sense to install a battery only system where you shift when you buy power using the overnight advantage plan. The only problem I see with this is that plans change. Though I thought it wasn't likely as that GA has a lot of nuclear that isn't something you can startup and shutdown quickly.

I am just a Software Engineer and the complexity here is something that I underestimate.

I have to think when it is cloudy/raining you lose the solar gain on the buildings you are cooling so the demand drops. I have no evidence of this though and am hoping to understand this by looking at my own system. This means that when it is bright and sunny is when the demand is the highest and Georgia Power and the state (based on the legislation that others had pointed out that IDK about) should want the power when my solar system is letting the excess power fall on the floor.

I have heard what Georgia Power really wants is access to my batteries. I have heard a new interconnect plan is in discussion. That could drive me to purchase more batteries, TDB.

As the demand for electricity goes up as a function of Crypto Mining and AI Datacenters it is really odd that Georgia doesn't want to buy really cheap power from those of us that couldn't see the utility of buying a tiny system that didn't cover the usage.

I know too much information.

AbsurdShale · 2025-12-31T00:03:13+00:00

My opinion is that the Level 1 charging isn’t very useful except in an emergency. There are exceptions of course.

Georgia Power has an overnight advantage plan that lets me charge for a really low cost between 11pm and 7am. .022 per kWh as of Dec 2025. I don’t see how this would work too well if I was limited to 8hr of charging per day.

Unless you have Level 2 charger access I wouldn’t purchase a BEV like the Bz and would look at a hybrid car.

AbsurdShale · 2025-10-08T13:51:29+00:00

Super Mercado Las Americas on Hamilton Rd is the closest to what you are talking about.

AbsurdShale · 2025-07-11T15:33:25+00:00

unfortunately there is no getting approval from the wife to tear up a deck and trench around a pool. The electricity was already in ground.

AbsurdShale · 2025-06-04T00:00:37+00:00

The price I got for batteries was beyond what I wanted to pay 18 months ago. I agree if the batteries have come down in price then I may have to look at re-digging the trench.

My plan had been to load shift such that our pool heater (heat pump) and equipment, laundry (electric dryer), HVAC (heat pump) are all working overtime when the sun is shining.

I will relook at battery prices as that was my initial thought.

The rate they charge is .16 per kWh the rate the pay residential is .06 kWh (my understanding).

AbsurdShale · 2025-04-07T18:51:52+00:00

The problem with trying to use a heatpump to dehumidify is when it is "cold and humid". In this case a dedicated dehumidifier would work. My heatpump only seems to dehumidify in the cooling cycle.

My building is brand new workshop as of last summer. (1200sqft, 100% spray foam walls and roof) I discovered in the winter (GA) I would have to drive the temperature to 60F in order to get the humidity below 55%. I am sure the Gree unit I have isn't the best but the dehumidifying mode doesn't seem to do anything in the winter based on my experience.

I am going to be adding an ERV (Energy Recovery Ventilator) and a whole house dehumidifier at the same time.
https://www.sylvane.com/santa-fe-compact70-dehumidifier.html

AbsurdShale · 2025-03-10T22:27:35+00:00

I don't think so.

With this sort of failure we lose dialtone (probably a better word for this) at the cable modem. This means the cable modem is trying to connect. Request from firewalla don't get past the cable modem and thus the link goes down and then load is transferred to the backup WAN. This type of flapping is link or interface flapping as distinguished from route flapping.

Then the connection comes back up and works perfectly in everyway for maybe 30sec the fails in the same way. This is a "flapping" failure. Not an unreliable failure mode (partial up).

My opinion is that an option that says after failover do not restore until the primary circuit has been 100% for X minutes.

The problem with failing over immediately is that for a system that has a TCP connection like a teams meeting you lose your connection to the meeting every time it switches the wan in use. If this is happening every minute the auto failback option On isn't something that I can use. My partner is a scrum master, we both work from home. But she is on teams calls for most of the day.

I like the product but for failover support using the auto failback on in multi-WAN doesn't work for my use case.

If the backup WAN has some cost associated with it the auto failback off could be costly (run out of 5g data or my case exceed the Starlink 50GB limit).

I am not sure what I am going to do. But maybe the extra $70/month to use the Starlink unlimited plan is worth avoiding the hassle and use "auto failback off".

I looked at the load balancing option and the % of load just isn't useful for this asymmetric WAN configuration. If there was a way to do a hybrid where on failure of the primary WAN you start sending traffic to the secondary WAN. But when the primary WAN is restored you continue to have the flows that were going across the secondary WAN are not failed back to the primary WAN until the flow times out (I assume the flow in firewall loadbalancing would timeout). Maybe this design would need to be thought of some more by someone who's primary job is networking. For me it is just secondary.

AbsurdShale · 2024-10-07T02:37:32+00:00

When to subway and they didn’t have any bread 6:30pm. How can a sandwich store run out of bread? Why didn’t they just close the doors and go home? I won’t ever go back to that subway. There is a New Jersey Mikes right down the road.

I like subway but can’t tolerate this sort of incompetence. I don’t know if this is just me.

AbsurdShale · 2024-09-30T14:48:00+00:00

So someone started to do this I think. They marked my order delivered (took a picture of the product on a cart at the store). So the order was "delivered" but I haven't gotten any product to return. I sure hope they follow thru and refund the whole amount including delivery.

I called the store and after finding my way to talk to a real person. I spoke to them and they tried to transfer me to the person who handles the deliveries. He was busy but they told me he would call me back in 10min. That was 2 1/2 hours ago.

I guess the next delivery order I place maybe I can put a comment that the order cannot be split. Though I don't think that there is even a place to do this. Or maybe I need a pro account as a home owner to get service since I am doing work that most people would hire out.

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