16 panels produced 100 kWh in January

[Joanne_T]

We had Energy Service Partners install our solar in April 2021. The sales representative lied to us about our monthly solar cost and our monthly PGE bills. Our solar was supposed to cost $80 a month…not $116. We were told we would never have to pay more than $10 a month PGE and a lot of times PGE would owe us money.
The first month of our solar was June 2021 it was great …PGE owed us $30.

  What happened in Nov and Dec 2021 and now Janurary 2022? Our PGE bill did NOT go down…in fact it went up in DEc 2021…Plus we are still paying $116 a month for solar so it is like paying nearly double what we paid pre-solar!!!! We went into debt for over $30,000  to save money!!!  Instead, the past 3 months we are paying nearly DOUBLE what we would normally pay for power!! We have contacted ESP Solar by email. They told us they would analyze our service. I just sent them our last three months PGE bills. There has got to be some mistake here.  

 A supervisor, Scott from ESP called yesterday.  He said our system is operating as it should.  What???? there is NOT a mistake????  He said our 16 panels only produced 100 kwhs of power in Dec. despite the fact that there was only a few rainy days in Dec.  We would like to know if that is normal?

We produced 1000 kwhs of power in June. We realize we made a big mistake using ESP for solar.

[Marty]

@Joanne_T

He said our 16 panels only produced 100 kwhs of power in Dec. despite the fact that there was only a few rainy days in Dec. We would like to know if that is normal?

Hi Joanne, it’s really disappointing to hear when people are not given full details of expected system performance before purchasing.

Solar is obviously very variable, and output depends on your location. Where are you based? According to our calculator in December in the middle of CA you can expect about 300kWh a month with 16 panels (depending of size) facing due south at a 25 degree roof pitch. But like I said this depends on a lot of variables, not least the weather. In Australia it’s a requirement that the solar company gives you details of what output you can expect on a monthly basis with the specific variables of your system, but I don’t think that’s a requirement in the US? They should be able to give you those details on request I would have thought. Good luck.