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I'm in Alabama Power country back living near Birmingham. They charge a yuge monthly fee if you have solar and put power back onto the grid, only for them to buy your excess power from you at a tiny fraction of the cost they sell power to us.

Thus, I don't put power onto the grid. I have my inverter set to do "zero reporting" or "no report". That means when I have excess power I don't put it onto the grid. My inverter (really the charge controller within the inverter) simply doesn't open the throttle all the way on the power coming from the solar panels if there's nowhere for it to go.

So anything you hear about solar panels paying for themselves by selling power back to the power company -- that doesn't apply to Alabama Power customers. Because I knew that going in I and my solar installer had to choose an inverter that had the optional zero report feature. When I say my solar system will pay for itself in 12 to 13 years, it's all about saving money by paying less of a power bill.

The good news is that when the grid power goes out (which rarely happens so I guess it doesn't hardly matter) my solar power doesn't automatically go out too. People who put power back onto the grid have to have their inverter shut off if the grid goes down. The idea is that linemen fixing downed cables don't want to check the cable for power, confirm it has no power, then start handling the cable only for it be charged again when the sun comes out and my A/C shuts off (meaning I'm not using power so it would go out to the grid). So the feature of a person's solar system shutting off automatically whenever the grid is down is meant to protect the linemen (understandably). Mine isn't set up like that because I don't put power onto the grid anyway. So if the power lines go down I at least have power from my solar system (as long as I've got some sun and/or battery power).