Electricity is a vital utility, but it will cost you— the average Canadian household pays about $100 dollars per month for it. For one Surrey resident though, his power bill is a simple $3. How did he do it? Daniel Jennings of OffTheGridNews.com reports on the details:
Hans Wekking of Surrey, British Columbia, pays just $3 a month for energy and that amount includes the cost of charging his electric car. His 10 solar panels are tied into the grid.
"This shields you from any rate hikes," he said. "Once you've paid for the system, the electricity is free," he said. "So if there's any future rate increases — like gasoline keeps going up, so is electricity — so for 25 years you are producing electricity," he added.
Wekking is correct about future rate increases – in both countries. The US Department of Energy estimates that the cost of electricity in the United States will increase by 21 percent over the next 10 years and 51 percent over the next 20 years. That makes the $10,000 that Wekking spent on his solar system a very good investment, he said.
Some people may be wondering why Hans still pays the power company despite having solar panels. As mentioned in the article, his panels are grid-tied, which means they are still connected to the power grid; as Vancouver solar energy expert Terratek would explain, panels often generate more electricity than your home really needs, and the surplus flows back into the grid to be bought by a power company. In cases of shortfall, however, the house can tap into the power grid to fill the gap— hence the single digit power bill.
Of course, solar panels in Vancouver and around Canada can also be installed by experts like Terratek to make them completely autonomous via off-grid systems. Instead of feeding the excess energy back into the grid, they instead store them in batteries for future use. As such, they generate all the power a home needs, which means that energy bills can be whittled down further to zero.
(Man Pays $3 Electric Bill Thanks To Solar Panels, OffTheGridNews.com, October 28, 2013)