My partner and I have been planning on buying rooftop solar panels for our home for years. We had been saving up for it for a while. We were hoping to save up more, so as not to have to finance the project very much (if at all). But when Donald Trump was sworn in as president again in January of 2025, and promptly began to disassemble the federal government and replace it with a single-party, authoritarian police state, we figured that home solar and electric vehicle tax rebates would not last much longer. We moved quickly to spend what we had to get the ball rolling on solar panel installation before the administration would inevitably terminate federal tax credits for solar installations, which they did in August.
We tried moving as fast as we could, but there were delays in the installation due to defects with the house's roofing tiles. We just hoped that projects that were initiated before the announcement of the tax credit repeal would be grandfathered-in. Thankfully, Republicans were "kind" enough to keep them going through the end of the year.
In any case, we finally got the project completed at the end of August, and now have functioning solar panels on the roof of the house!
We also now have a couple months of lower energy bills due to the panels. Unfortunately, we did not get the panels installed early enough to take advantage of all the summer sun this year, but now that we are in the autumn, and the air conditioner isn't running as often, we should start seeing credits on our power bill for the electricity we are exporting back to the grid. By the time next summer rolls along, the expectation is that we will have banked enough credits that our energy bill will be down to little more than just the baseline connection fee (which I think is currently $18.50). We should still be able to qualify for the 30% tax rebate next year, which should put another nice chunk of cash back in our pockets.
We now have functioning solar panels and have taken the largest step to reduce our carbon footprint.
At the end of the day, though, we didn't do this for financial reasons. We did it because it's the right thing to do. Even if I knew for a fact that I would never get a return on investment from installing solar, I would still have wanted to do it in order to reduce my personal contribution to the carbon emissions that are contributing to climate change. The fact that it will provide a financial return on investment within a few years is just icing on the cake.
NV Energy's new Demand Charge
We are also getting this solar system installed hot off the heels of our local utility, NV Energy, announcing a new mandatory demand charge. This new tariff will add a new daily fee to all NV Energy customers' bills which will be based on your the largest peak of electricity demand during any 15-minute period during each day. This means that in addition to be charged for your total electricity consumption, you are also being charged based on the largest concurrent amount of electricity that you draw from the grid.
NV Energy has several goals with this new demand charge. The first of which is to offset the loss of revenue from so many rooftop solar system reducing the amount of electricity that consumers draw from the grid (and therefore how much they pay NV Energy). The second goal is to try to improve grid stability by discouraging consumers from consuming too much concurrent power by having too many appliances with large loads active at once.
One of the problems that NV Energy has been facing is that the high adoption of rooftop solar, combined with increasing adoption of EVs is creating strains on the local power grid. For decades, the period of highest electricity demand in southern Nevada was the middle of the afternoon (roughly 2pm through 6 pm). This is when it was the hottest, and air conditioners were running the most. However, with more and more people installing rooftop solar, this peak has actually shifted, creating what analysts call a "duck curve".
PHOTO CREDIT: Steve Marcus | Las Vegas Sun
There is so much rooftop solar capacity, that NV Energy's peak loads have shifted to the evening.
The solar panels are generating so much electricity during the afternoon, that grid demands are actually relatively low. But then the sun starts setting around 6 or 7 pm, and the generation from those solar panels rapidly drops off. But it's still hot at 6 or 7 pm, so air conditioners are still running. Add to that the fact that many people are coming home from work and plugging in EVs, and now there is a massive new load coming online at the same time that solar generation is dropping to zero. This has combined to shift the peak demand period for NV Energy from the middle afternoon to the early evening (6pm through 9pm). This is all in NV Energy's public filings, and is a common problem in territories that have mass adoption of solar power generating, including Nevada, California, Hawai'i, parts of Australia, and other territories around the world.
So not only is this peak load being shifted to a time when it cannot be offset by cheap solar power, it's also a higher load than it used to be (due to new EVs). The long-term solution to this problem is battery storage, but energy storage technologies are still too immature and expensive to be adopted at the mass scales needed to offset this problem -- though that is quickly changing, and battery adoption is likely to take off quickly in the coming years.
How the NV Energy Demand Charge will affect us
This demand charge proposal got a lot of pushback from consumers, and even some pushback from government authorities citing potential unlawfulness. But it was approved by the Public Utilities Commission of Nevada (PUCN), and (pending lawsuits) it will go into effect in the spring of 2026.
There's also a lot of misinformation and fear-mongering about this demand charge. Put simply, a lot of people are citing the large increases for some customers due to the new demand charge, but they are neglecting the fact that NV Energy is also lowering the regular kWh charge on total electricity consumed, which will offset most (if not all) of the new demand charge for most customers. For example, there's an online rate calculator that was created by concerned citizens, but this calculator only shows you the specific demand charge; it does not take into account the lower kWh charge.
To be fair, NV Energy wasn't very good about communicating the reduced kWh fee to the public. It was buried deep within their filing, and they are only just now starting to publish more information about the overall rate change.
Now before I get accused of being a utility shill (full disclosure, I do contracting work with utilities, including NV Energy), I want to say that I am not a fan of this new demand charge. Put simply, I think that it unfairly punishes consumers for something that they have little-to-no control over. You can reasonably moderate your total energy consumption (kWh), but it is much harder to moderate your peak demand (kW). The problem is that the largest loads for most homes are appliances like air conditioning and refrigeration. Simply turning off your lights isn't going to affect your demand much (especially if all your lights are LEDs). You would need to control when your air conditioner and refrigerator cycles on, which most consumers don't have the ability to do, since these appliances cycle automatically based on ambient temperature. There are tools that can enable this (home automation platforms such as OpenHAB and Home Assistant can be helpful), but they require a certain degree of tech-savvy to effectively use.
Electric vehicle and plug-in hybrid owners (like me) will likely be the hardest hit by NVE's new daily demand charge.
Put simply, without NV Energy providing customers with tools to help regulate their peak demand, I feel it is unfair for them to expect consumers to pay these demand charges.
But I also understand why NV Energy wants to implement this new charge, and I do think that it's goal of encouraging consumers to reduce their peak demand is a laudable goal. (Even if it is probably only a secondary goal, after making more money)
This new demand charge will be the hardest on customers who have multiple air conditioning units, an electric vehicle, and/or multiple refrigeration units. If multiple air conditioners are running at the same time, your EV is plugged in, you have a chest freezer in your garage, and you run your electric clothes dryer, all at the same time, then your demand is going to be very high! And even if only some of those devices are running concurrently, it will lead to a high daily peak demand. I am one of those customers, as we have 2 A/C units, a plug-in hybrid car, a chest freezer (inside the kitchen), and an electric clothes dryer. My bill will likely go up, and we'll have to more closely monitor and manage the usage of all those devices. But the bill won't go up by hundreds of dollars per year like that online calculator suggests it will. Instead, my bill will likely go up by about $40-$60 per year (less than $5 per month).
There's also some misinformation and misunderstanding about how this affects solar customers. It is true that solar credits cannot be used to offset the new demand charge. But your solar generation will offset a large amount of your daily demand. The daily demand charge only applies to the electricity that you draw from the grid.
If you do have 2 A/C units, then I would recommend turning one off after 5 or 6pm, or setting it back a few degrees. This will help keep your load lower during the time when solar generating is tapering off. Similarly, if you have an electric vehicle, then I would recommend waiting to plug it in until later in the evening, when your air conditioner(s) isn't/aren't running as much. Most EVs (and some EV chargers) will also let you change the rate at which it charges. So if you reduce the charging rate, your EV will charge more slowly, but it will draw less electricity, and will help keep your demand charge low. If you have a large solar system, then you will likely still be able to run both A/Cs and plug in your EV during the afternoon, since your solar system will cover a large chunk of that electricity demand. As long as you are not pulling the electricity from the grid, then your demand charge will remain low.
More efficient EV
I'm also hoping to be able to buy a new EV or plug-in hybrid within the next couple years, which will also likely jack up my energy bill, unless I'm very careful about when and how I charge it. In any case, with the new solar panels, the plug-in hybrid that we bought a few years ago will also become cheaper (and cleaner!) to operate, as it will be charged with [mostly] free, renewable energy. Unfortunately, it does not seem like there will be an EV tax credit for when I buy my next car (to replace my 20-year old Toyota), since I will not be able to afford to buy a new car this year (pending getting very lucky with a football parlay or something like that).
PHOTO CREDIT: Car & Classic
PHOTO CREDIT: Chevrolet
I always assumed my mid-life crisis car would be a Corvette, but I hate the newest body designs.
I've been eying a new Prius Prime or a Ford Mustang Mach-E, but the car that I most want for my mid-life crisis car is a Porsche Taycan Turbo (with 4WD), in "frozen blue metallic" (and preferably with the beige/tan interior). For most of my life, my favorite car was always the Chevy Corvette, and I always assumed that a Corvette would be my eventual mid-life crisis car. But I actually hate the styling of the C7 and C8 Corvettes. They look too aggressive, and I hate that GM ditched the iconic circular tail lights. It just doesn't lool like a Corvette to me, and it looks like it's trying too hard to look like a European super car, instead of an American muscle car. I'm also committed to not buying a gas-powered car, and since GM hasn't released an electric version of the Corvette (as of the time of this writing), Corvettes have kind of fallen out of my favor.
Instead, I played with a Taycan in Gran Turismo 7 for some Porsche-specific race events, and instantly fell in love with it. It has been my go-to car for any difficult race that isn't an endurance race (since it's nature as an electric vehicle makes it not viable for any race that requires refueling). The Taycan is now my dream mid-life crisis car, but something that I will probably never be able to afford, since even used ones sell for over $70k.
New Taycan or not, my energy bill will likely be higher than I would like it to be after installing solar. So the return on investment will likely take longer than anticipated. But that bill increase was going to happen whether I bought the solar panels or not. I'm still very happy that I did it, and it's something that I've been wanting to do for a long time. I've finally put my money where my mouth is, and gone green!
After playing Gran Turismo 7, my new mid-life crisis dream car is a Porsche Taycan EV.