CMP and Community Solar both charging me?

Submitted by The_Stein244 t3_120iv6j in Maine

Maybe there is a mistake or I misunderstood how community solar works. But for the past 3 months, I have paid for CMP and for Community Solar (Nautilus). I thought I was only going to be paying Nautilus at a lower price (15% off) for my electric. What is going on? Anyone else experiencing this?

EDIT - Nautilus response to my question: " We are working with CMP to transition all billing to be on one invoice from us and that should be completed shortly; however, until then CMP will credit your bill based on the allocated generation for the full kilowatt-hour (KWH) that your panels generated, as a member of the solar farm. Then Nautilus will only bill you for 85% of that allocated generation amount, which means you save 15% of the solar credit monthly.

The email you received was advising you that our billing was delayed due to CMP not sending the reports to us in a timely manner. "

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NetLibrarian t1_jdhiuqi wrote

I don't go through nautilus, but I use another community solar, and I get split bills as well. I believe I can explain:

During the winter, your Community Solar area makes considerably less energy. Not enough to fully cover all the members electric costs. (If they made enough electricity in the winter, they'd be overproducing in the summer, so it's always going to work out this way with small scale solar)

So, you get an equal or otherwise appropriate share of the energy made by your community solar, and then cover the rest through another provider. That other provider's costs show up through CMP.

On top of that, CMP charges for the delivery of power, completely separate from providing power.

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The_Stein244 OP t1_jdhkmre wrote

Right that makes sense, BUT my combined bill is much higher than it used to be just through CMP. Maybe it's because all energy is higher now and it's just a coincidence?

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zezar911 t1_jdhkw6e wrote

yeah CMP costs have exploded in recent months... in all likelihood the extra power from CMP just costs a shitload more than it did before you had nautilus

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NetLibrarian t1_jdhmxme wrote

There's a few options here:

One, energy costs just recently went up a bunch. Everybody's getting much bigger bills than before, so it could be that, and we're just getting used to it.

Two: If this is a single month spike payment, it could be that CMP, for whatever reason, couldn't get to your meter to read it. They'll then estimate your power use for the month, and tend to estimate HIGH. You'll get a credit the following month when they get the actual reading.

Three, you could actually have an appliance that's sucking up a lot of juice. CMP does have an energy meter log that can show you how much juice you've been using per month. If that's suddenly spiked, you want to check your appliances. Electric water heaters, space heaters, and pumps (Well or sump) can all end up running constantly when something fails or is forgotten, and will gobble up juice when this happens.

Four, as I don't know Nautilus, make sure your agreement with them didn't include any extra fees or charges, particularly for the first X months of signup sort of thing.

Those would be the possibilities I can think of.

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Seyword t1_jdhzfgz wrote

How much are you paying in total? How big is your house?

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The_Stein244 OP t1_jdi2pwj wrote

Just whipped up some numbers for you, thanks for making me look back at it. My house is 1,000 SF.

Average Cost Per Month:

2018: $56

2019: $56

2020: $70

2021: $82

2022: $93

Average Cost Per Month (past 6 months, CMP+Nautilus):

$129 ($79 from CMP and $50 from Nautilus)

​

Feb 2023 was an outlier with $167 from CMP and $83 from Nautilus

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mainebitch1 t1_jdime8i wrote

Hah haw! Channeling the Simpsons for ya enjoy those solar farms suckers! I gotta start my own what a racket

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The_Stein244 OP t1_jdimk80 wrote

assuming you dont do community solar... what do your electric bills look like the past year?

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mainebitch1 t1_jdimwrn wrote

Snot bad was 160$ a month and i use a ton of electricity. After cmp put the fucks to us and raised rates a ton now it averages 250$ but i also run a heat pump about 50% of the time

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out_run_radio t1_jdi97gg wrote

I had this exact same issue. I called nautilus and here was the explanation.

The solar company provides you “credits” those credits get applied to the CMP bill and what isn’t used (or accepted) you still have to pay community solar for in a separate bill just to them. They said this would be changed within a few years but honestly it wasn’t sold to us this way and I’m fairly unhappy with it. Not only do I owe our overlords CMP whatever the want to charge I’m also in the hole for what the solar company has credited me, all for my benefit I’m sure.

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The_Stein244 OP t1_jdihrwb wrote

right exactly. You just have to hope that you are saving somehow. Otherwise you're just paying more to support green energy (which is also okay, just be transparent about it)

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