Tired of Kings Mountain Electric bills? Here are your solar and backup options

Who runs Kings Mountain's electric system

Kings Mountain Energy Services is a department of the City of Kings Mountain with two divisions, electric and natural gas. The city has provided electric service for over 120 years and natural gas since 1956, with gas service reaching small portions of Gaston County. It brands itself as KM Energy, The Power of Local. Rates are set by the City Council.

Kings Mountain is an ElectriCities member town but not one of the 19 towns in North Carolina Municipal Power Agency Number 1. The city also runs a smart meter portal, which helps when you need monthly usage for a solar quote.

Solar on the Kings Mountain system

We could not find Kings Mountain's current solar rider posted online, so treat this as a list of questions for the electric department. Many ElectriCities member towns credit rooftop solar through a renewable energy credit rider rather than retail net metering. Shelby, for example, uses a buy-all, sell-all rider that pays an avoided cost rate. Ask Kings Mountain whether it offers net metering, net billing or buy-all, sell-all, what the export credit is, whether there is a monthly fee for solar accounts, and what the interconnection steps are.

Outages and backup

A small, local crew is one of the strengths of a town system. ElectriCities figures show public power customers in North Carolina average under one outage a year and about an hour of total outage time. Storms do not read the averages, so plenty of town customers still want a plan for the day the power is out longer than that.

Solar alone shuts off when the grid goes down. That is a safety rule, so line crews are not hurt by power feeding back into the lines. To keep lights, a fridge and a well pump running during an outage you need a battery, a generator or both. Under a buy-all, sell-all setup the panels often feed their own meter, so how a battery fits depends on Kings Mountain Electric's metering rules. A good contractor designs around them.

Kings Mountain has an edge most towns do not. The city runs its own natural gas system, so if your street has gas service a whole home generator can run on city gas without propane deliveries.

Get a straight answer with a $349 evaluation

The honest answer to whether solar makes sense on a Kings Mountain Electric account depends on your roof, your usage and the town's current credit rules. A paid home energy evaluation on HomeBackupPros covers all three for $349: an electric audit, a review of how you use energy and a written system quote. If you go ahead with that contractor, the $349 comes off the purchase price.

It also gets a contractor to Kings Mountain on a real schedule instead of someday. Every contractor on HomeBackupPros is approved by our team after we check their NC electrical contractor license. They are independent businesses, and HomeBackupPros does not install anything. Your address goes only to contractors you choose to share it with. If you prefer, a contractor can offer a free site visit or a mailed estimate instead.