What happens without net metering? Use it or lose it? Excess kWh dumped onto the grid when you not home, gone forever?

It means your installer better understand math and the celestial cycle. Basically, if you’re not home until say 5-6 PM you can dump high value energy to the grid and get offsets equal to 2-3x other time use.

[quote]Customers also have the option to select a time-of-use rate schedule, under which rates are higher during peak periods of the day and during the summer months and lower at night and during other low-usage periods. These rate schedules are usually tiered, meaning that rates vary both by time of consumption and by level of consumption. For customers on time-of-use rate schedules, net metering credits are assigned a value based on the retail cost of power in place at the time of the power generation.
As a result, solar power generated during a summer late afternoon may offset two to three times that amount of winter or nighttime power consumption. For example, under January 2014 rates, one kWh of solar power sent to the PG&E grid between 1 p.m. and 7 p.m. on a summer weekday would earn a credit of 28.7¢, which is the summer peak-period residential time-of-use charge for one kWh of baseline usage. During the summer months between 9 p.m. and 10 a.m., this credit would offset 2.85 kWh of power, since the baseline cost of power is just 10.1¢ per kWh during this interval.
Concerns that the net metering program was shifting costs to customers who do not have solar on their roofs led to legislation requiring a study of net metering’s costs and benefits for all ratepayers. AB 2514, enacted in 2012, directed the California Public Utilities Commission to undertake a study “to determine who benefits from, and who bears the economic burden, if any, of, the net energy metering program.”
The study was completed in October 2013 by an outside consultant, Energy and Environmental Economics, Inc.[/quote]

[quote=flu]I am going to hold out for a few more years. Hopefully panels will get smaller more efficient and become more like a commodity item…[/quote]

Me too. Plus I live in condos. Maybe the association of a rental townhouse might allow solar later.