Solar Panel Dollars

83 year old Olly Young’s dilemma had to do with dollars and cents. She wondered why she spent 20 thousand plus dollars on a solar panel system for her home to help ease her electric bill, but still has to pay electric usage from Colorado Springs Utilities.

Her recent bills put her in a quandary. We helped her understand it. On Olly’s bill, she had zero killowatt hours received but still had 170-kilowatt hours that Utilities indicates she used during a recent month. After further investigation, we learned Mrs. Young did use those hours from Utilities, in addition to what her solar panel generated. The zero amount on her bill is because Utilities has to do a manual calculation about her actual usage compared to what her system generates.

Olly’s system generates about 80 percent of the electricity she uses each month. The rest of her bill reflects how much Utilities had to fill in the gap for that month.

After an explanation, of the “why”, Mrs. Young told me the bill makes sense and there was no mistake on Utilities fault.