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She got an electric bill for $1,373. She's not alone
(www.npr.org)
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this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2026
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I have an electricity bill of $0/month during the summer months after getting solar panels about 3 years ago. It was expensive to buy the system outright, but every year the electricity rates go up, the panels become more valuable. While I'm very happy with my personal results, I became immediately aware that those at the lower end of economic spectrum would benefit even more from this.
A friend and I started to see if we could to solar panel installations for free for those that were most at-risk financially. While we came up with a workable modest hardware system we could install, we found charity solar installation would be extremely risky for us to undertake. With rooftop installations it would mean taking on the liability of interacting with people's roofs which means falls for people doing work, but also poorly maintained roofs including roof penetrations for fasteners and water leak liability. Even going "ground mount" didn't remove the risks because we'd have to be interacting with the homeowners electrical systems with possible fire risks from aging or unlicensed modifications from prior owners. This ignores the risks of copper theft from easily accessible ground mount systems. In the end we had to abandon the idea of giving others what we could afford for ourselves simply because it was took risky to us trying to do good.
Zero? My electricity bill is negative. I’m selling my over-production to the electric company.
Yes, I too get credit for over production with true 1:1 net metering (inside the month, and 1:1 for generation portion beyond the month) for juice I send back to the grid beyond just having a $0 bill/month. I also have a second deductive meter where I don't pay distribution fees for EV charging in the overnight hours. So in effect, I get paid by the electric company for EV charging between midnight and 4AM. I also generate enough electricity to have a large offset my winter heating bill by permanently turning off the natural gas service and and replacing the gas fired furnace with a heat pump. I also removed my standard electric water heater and put in a hybrid heat pump water heater for even more savings.
I didn't include any of that info in my first post because none of that was important to my point about solar panels being worth it to me and that I believe those that can't afford to do what I did should be able to get some of the same benefit I do. In fact, they need it more than I do, and I couldn't figure out a way to give it to them and that sucks.
Sounds like the system is working as intended
Only if the intended system is: "It is very expensive to be poor".
Yes. That's certainly an intended feature.