Now comes the best part—turning on your Enphase Energy System. Your installer will once again confirm that solar power is flowing and that all of the system components are operating and communicating properly. Next, they'll take some time to walk you through the entire system, explaining what each component does and making sure you're comfortable with all your control, monitoring, and customization options.  

If you haven’t already, you'll also want to download the Enphase App and log into your Enphase Account with the email address and password you used to register your system. From your phone or tablet, you'll then be able to see your system status, choose your settings, view how much energy you're using and producing, and more—right from the palm of your hand.  

During the installation process, your installer will also have used the serial numbers on your Enphase microinverters (and batteries, if you have them) to create a live version of your system on the Enphase Cloud. You’ll be able to view this on the Enphase App, including seeing production for each individual solar panel.  

They may need to install an Enphase cellular modem for your system if your Wi-Fi network can’t reliably reach where your communications devices are installed or if you have a battery storage system to ensure connectivity during a network outage. This ensures your system communicates with the Enphase Cloud so you can access your system's data. 

Regardless of how much energy your system generates, you’ll still get some type of electricity bill, albeit greatly reduced. You may still have tariffs and/or delivery charges that you must pay each month. Depending on the utility, some electricity bills will come monthly, while others will be due annually with monthly statements.

If your utility offers some form of net energy metering (NEM), they may estimate your delivery charges for the year, break them out monthly, and bill you for that amount. Then, at the end of the year, they’ll do a true-up to see if the value of the energy your system produced was higher than the value of the energy you consumed during the year or vice versa. If the value of the energy your system produces is greater than the cost of energy you used from the grid, you should get something back from the utility. If the energy you drew from the grid was more than the value of your system's exported energy, you may owe something to the utility at the end of the year.

But the good news is that if your installer used highly accurate modeling software like Solargraf, and your electricity usage is about the same as before you got solar, your bill should be close to what the proposal estimated. Which means you’re probably saving a substantial amount of money overall.  

After installation, the best way to see how much you’re saving is to wait until after the first full billing cycle with your new system in operation and then go back and look at the same month from the year prior. For both, you should be able to see how much energy your home used. But for the current bill, you’ll be able to see how much of that consumption was offset by your system. And your bill should reflect savings from using your solar to power your home. If you overproduced for the month and put power back into the grid, the bill should also show you how much energy was exported, and how much that extra production was worth in bill credits.

If you also have natural gas service, then your utility will continue to bill you for that. If your utility provides both gas and electric services, you’ll continue getting a combined bill. You’ll just need to look at the section for your electrical service to see how much you’re saving, your credits, and other details.

Each utility handles billing and NEM or SREC credits differently. So, if you have questions that your installer can’t answer, contact your utility directly to find out how it all works.