The Basics: kWh

So as a business owner you have heard about commercial solar systems and how they can save you money but you are still not sure of the whole process. What does it all mean? How does solar save money for a business?

Let’s start with the basics. Your electricity bill has various charges. Some are fixed like the service charge and others are based on your electricity consumption. The unit on which your business is charged is the kilowatt hour ( kWh)  which is a unit of energy.

For example , 100 watt light on for 10 hours uses 1 kWh. Basically on your bill under usage it may say that per kWh the retailer charges you, say $0.25 and the cost of running your 100 watt light for 10 hours is, therefore,  $0.25.

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Tariffs: Peak & Off-Peak

On many bills there is a peak tariff and off peak tariff ( and in some cases a shoulder) so this means that the same energy used at different times of the day has a different cost.

Now as we are talking about a commercial solar system with no energy storage ( see blog on energy storage for more info) the ability of the commercial solar system to address site loads, in other words how much electricity is being used, is limited to daylight hours.