Cost of Oklahoma Grid-tied Solar Panel and Wind Turbine Systems for a Representative Household

Oklahoma households serviced by investor owned electric utilities that have smart meters may select to be charged based on either a traditional meter rate schedule, a smart meter schedule, or they may install a household grid-tied wind turbine or solar panel system and be subject to a different rate schedule. The objective of the research is to determine the annual cost of electricity for a case study household for six alternative situations: grid purchased with traditional meter rates, grid with smart meter rates, and four household Renewable Distributed Generation (RDG) systems tied to the grid with unique rates under consideration for implementation. Twenty years of hourly information regarding wind and solar quantity were obtained from the Oklahoma Mesonet weather system. Hourly use data for a representative household were obtained from the Department of Energy. These data, the Oklahoma Corporation Commission rate schedules, and purchase prices and power output response functions, for each of the four household systems were used to address the objective. The annual cost of electricity for the modeled household is estimated to be $710 for the smart meter system and $812 for the traditional meter system. The estimated annual cost of $2,343 for the least costly household grid tied production system, a 4 kW solar system, is 3.3 times greater than the annual cost of purchasing from the grid via a smart meter system. If external consequences of electricity generation and distribution are ignored, given current and proposed rate structures and prices, household generation systems are not economically competitive in the region.