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this post was submitted on 28 Mar 2026
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Technology
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I paid ~$800 for 1.2kW of solar panels on my van in 2023. The 600Ah of LFP was an additional $1,700. I've not paid a power bill in 2.5 years. How anyone could choose to not go solar baffles me. I was paying $3/kWh through the city-owned utility. Nominally, it was somewhere around 15 cents, but after all the fees that Austin charges, despite using only 20kWh/month, my bill was $60 at minimum.
The city has now raised rates five times since I went off-grid, so a straight $60 times 30 months undersells the ROI. It would now be $75-80, and $80 times 30 months means I'll have broken even by May.
Less than three years, and when the power goes out in town, I'm unaware of it unless I run into a complaint on Reddit.
Uh, that's really a lot.
You think using 2.2% of that is excessive?
No, watt, not kilowatt. And US is an outlier by far, with 12 kw/month. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2000-watt_society
... My power bill for February was $1900 ...
holy shit, mine was $15 here in Australia so that's about 50c in US dollars (some sarcasm) AND that includes charging my ecar. i have 8.4kW of solar on the roof and I get paid a grid feed in tariff for the extra kW I don't use. We are conscious about doing electric intensive things when the suns shining though eg oven for baking, charging the ecar and ebikes, hot water on from 11-5 only etc
Holy crap. Do you live in a bitcoin server farm? Thats insane.
I don't disagree that it was insane!
But no, the reason is that I live in a decently sized old house in a cold area. We've dual zone climate control and I'm not sure either heat pump stopped running the whole month. I do run some servers but that's true year round and most months my power bill is in various parts of triple digits.
that is an absurdly high price for energy. I pay on average between 20 and 30 euro cent per kwh