Can solar panels, three Tesla Powerwalls completely eliminate your electric bill?

THREE POWERWALLS: Each of the Tesla home batteries I had installed in March 2019 at my New Jersey home stores roughly 13.5 kWh of energy generated by my solar panels.

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

HACKENSACK, N.J. -- When you purchase home batteries to store energy from your solar panels, Tesla doesn't promise you a rose garden.

In other words, Tesla says the Powerwall 2, as the latest version is known, allows you "to reduce reliance on the grid and run your home off solar day and night."

So far this year, I paid a service charge of $4.95 -- but nothing for electricity -- in each of 4 months to run a house of more than 3,000 square feet with central air conditioning and to charge my Tesla Model S roughly once a week.

You pay for 'delivery'

But in the other 3 months, my bill for electricity and delivery has totaled $90.02 (for Jan. 7 to Feb. 4, 2021); $181.08 (Feb. 5 to March 8) and $96.35 ( July 8 to Aug. 5, 2021). 

The most recent bill shows a charge of $65.57 for electric supply and $30.78 for "delivery."

Still, my batteries have kept my house running during every power outage in my neighborhood since they were installed in March 2019.

No night rates

We get a lot of rain and snow in northern New Jersey, and my solar panels often generate little or no electricity for my storage batteries, meaning I draw a lot from the grid.

My utility doesn't pay me for excess power or have lower rates for electricity at night. 

If I generate more than I use, those kilowatt hours go into a "bank" that I can draw on later.

Hooray for SRECs

In fact, the key to eliminating your electric bill in the Northeast is not just solar panels and Tesla batteries that store the electricity they generate.

I earn Solar Renewable Energy Credits or SRECs, which go only to those who, like me, own their solar systems.

I can sell those credits to my utility through a middleman.

The certificates are worth roughly $223 each (I recently sold 5), down from a high of $600 each after I had solar panels installed in 2009.

For a second, smaller solar system I had installed in 2012 with a loan from my utility -- PSE&G -- I am repaying the loan with SRECs that are valued at $400 each.

READ: The best and worst of Tesla

SOUTHERN EXPOSURE: My home has a southern exposure, meaning the sun shines on my solar panels through the day.

Watching TV, I have so many questions, but the media don't seem to have answers

WET BUT FAR FROM SEXY: The Claude "Bud" Lewis Carlsbad Desalination Plant on the California coast provides 50 million gallons of fresh water a day to San Diego, reports E360, an online magazine published at the Yale School of the Environment. (Photo from Poseidon Water) 

Conundrums: Drought, the U.N.,

cling peaches, invisible captions

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

HACKENSACK, N.J. -- Night after night, the evening TV news reports about the drought in California -- claiming there isn't even enough water to fight the wildfires that destroyed an historic mining town and other property.

But in June 2019, there were 11 seawater desalination plants in California and 10 more were proposed, according E360, an online magazine.

Why have the media been silent about them? Why aren't more of these plants being built? 

Don't they hold the solution to this cycle of drought, fires and barren farmland?

BLAST SCENE: The explosion in the port of Beirut on Aug. 4, 2020, leveled many blocks of the Lebanese city and killed more than 200.

What does the U.N. do?

The other night, I saw an alarming TV report on the first anniversary of that massive explosion in the port of Beirut, Lebanon, with soldiers or police battling protesters in the street.

The report portrayed government officials as corrupt and refusing to investigate the explosion, which killed more than 200 people, or assign blame.

Meanwhile, motorists have to spend hours in lines to fill up their tanks with gasoline.

Lebanon is far from the only failed state around the world, so the natural question is what does the United Nations do?

Nothing, in Lebanon's case. Nothing, in Syria's case. Nothing, in the cases of so many African countries.

Does the U.N. merely call diplomats from around the world to come and live lavishly in New York, one of the most expensive cities in the world, and jawbone all day?

What's the good of a Security Council taking decisive action and moving against a failed, corrupt government, if Russia or any other member can veto the council's decisions?

Cling peaches

Is there any good reason cling peaches and nectarines are still being grown instead of all freestone, where the pit is separated from the flesh?

Try to cut them up for a fruit salad or even eat them out of hand without making a mess of the kitchen counter or your clothes or both.

I buy organic, and the peaches and nectarines I find at Whole Foods Market in Paramus, N.J., aren't labeled as cling or freestone, so you don't find out the bad news until you get home.

Are cling superior in any way? I doubt it. They just piss you off.

TV captions

Here is another infuriating oversight -- captions for documentaries that require translation are invariably in white and often blend into the background, so that they're unreadable.

Why not just render them in black? At least you wouldn't miss any words, and when the background is dark, then white captions would be justified.

One color doesn't fit all.

I noticed this recently when watching the PBS series, "Latino Americans."  

I loved the music, but much was lost in the translation when the captions appeared in white.