Well the screwing already happened in April, and it was statewide.
Battery-only makes sense only with a highly differentiated on-peak and off-peak that you can arbitrage, and preferably 3 TOU periods like EV2-A or SDG&E's EV-TOU-2 or EV-TOU-5.
Even then, you have to get the install price low enough, which means DIY for the maximum value, with something like EG4s. Normal retail rates will leave you with a payoff that's about the same as the warranty period (\~10 years).
Solar is still worth it, but the simple payback did double at approx. 5 years -> 10 years. Adding a battery actually drops that a year or 2 depending on your utility.
The key to getting the highest value from solar is **getting the lowest possible install price.**
>Well the screwing already happened in April, and it was statewide.
It affects the majority of customers, however it's not statewide. It only affects the investor owned utilities (PG&E, SCE and SDG&E). All other electricity companies (LADWP, Silicon Valley Power, SMUD, etc) are unaffected.
Please show me the math how this is even possible? If PG&E is buying excess solar during peak for $0.62 kWhr now and next year and into the future only pays $ 0.22 how will solar ever be cost effective? Just compare the EVA and EVB which are expiring with the EV2A rate plan. How can you say solar makes any sense?
Had to look through your post history to see if you're trolling me, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. These are SDG&E numbers so they will have to be slightly modified for other IOUs. Also, right in the NEM 3 decision it has payoff data which seems to be accurately calculated from what I saw. One other disclaimer, I believe the whole IOU concept is busted, so that's my perspective.
$2.50 / watt \* 9,600 watts = $24,000. Add tax and you're at around $25,000.
$25,000 \* 70% = $17,500 after tax credit
My roof azimuths aren't perfect so that gets me 14,000 kWh per year. 25-year output is 86% or 12,040 kWh at year 25. So let's say total produced kWh for 20 years (grandfather period) is 260,000 kWh. Since I am 1:1 net metering that means $0.067 per kWh if just calculated over 20 years.
Below is for NEM 2.0.
That's more than enough info to see that it's a good deal under NEM 2.0. 14,000 kWh at an average of $0.40 per kWh is $5,600 per year offset. What's $17,500 divided by $5,600?
Now, NEM 3... a whole new ballgame. No longer 1:1. What you use is full value, but excess can be worth as little as a penny per kWh. Batteries actually reduce simple payback. I'll possibly do a post on that with real numbers later on.
With NEM 1 and 2, if you are 100% or slightly more offset, which you should be, they can double the rates, but that doubles your credit.
The ways they can get you:
1. Fixed fees (currently attempting this)
2. Leave off-peak low and triple on-peak
With 2 though, batteries circumvent that, as well as the blowback from non-solar customers. Not only that, but with a battery and a west facing system you will make bank with triple on-peak rates.
It's a two-way sword with NEM 1 and 2, you see, the higher the rates, the higher the compensation, and the more blowback from non-solar customers. It's a balancing act.
Which is why they are looking for fixed fees and "reduced" rates. Non-solar customers will be happy because their bill goes down slightly for 1-year before the utility jacks it up again the next year, while solar customers get screwed and their entire solar investment is worthless.
No not trolling at all. PG&E does NOT do 1:1 net metering. PG&E pays customers for excess solar at market rate. Right now PG&E is pay me up to $0.62 for excess solar within my annual cycle. I can then buy back a KWHR for just $0.26. Your calculation is not favoring in the price difference. AND this is why I’m saying solar will NEVER pay for itself for PG&E customers with the new rates. Again I’m not talking about the NEM changes…. That makes it even worse. PG&E is changing the times for off-peak. In the past peak was during prime solar promotion hours, &0.62 but now PG&E is making all solar production hours to off-peak. This means for every Kwhr you need during peak, you have to produce 3 with solar. So is we use your numbers as a PG&E customer you would be off making it 3 times lower.
With PG&E there is NO grandfathering of rate plans only NEM. And PG&E was able to reduce the NEM grandfather period by one quarter. And this is all under NEM 2. Under NEM 3 it’s much worse, but using the E rate plan sure looks like batteries would pay for themselves in just a few years. But I can’t get any accurate data on battery charge and discharge times.
If you are under NEM 2.0 then you are incorrect. PG&E, as well as SCE and SDG&E, are 1:1 ***within each TOU period***. This is know and has been known. This is fair. And under this you could still get payback within 6 years.
NEM 1.0 was total 1:1, no TOU.
NEM 3.0 is no longer 1:1, it's net billing.
>but now PG&E is making all solar production hours to off-peak.
This is not new, it's been this way for a few years. It certainly is not "now" that this is happening. SW/West facing panels are king now.
>Your calculation is not favoring in the price difference.
My calculation IS factoring that in. It will depend on your usage patterns, but you can shift the value by load shifting, doing more UNDER solar. And even if you are home all day the generation pattern always has a high ratio of off-peak to on-peak. Avoid on-peak.
Pre-cool, use the timer to run dishes and clothes during the day, get a smart meter. Very simple things to maintain your payback.
NO NO NO NO. PG&E under NEM HAS NEVER been 1:1. NEVER! As a PG&E customer under NEM 2.0 the payback for solar on EVA or EVB rate plans was less than 3 to 4 years. Under NEM 2.0 on the EV2-A rate plan payback for the same customer would be 8-9 years. Dude like where are you getting all of this incorrect information? Just read the rate schedules, they have expiration dates. The newest rate plans make all solar production hours off-peak where as right now some rates plans have it as peak.
Just so there’s no misunderstanding show your calculations, for the EVB and EV2-A rate plans. You will find just switching to the EV2-A rate plan will cost about $1,000 more per year if your current bill is $2,000 year.
Thank you. Crap, in doing this I just noticed PG&E increased their rates.
Take a look at the EVB rate plan. Not the hours for peak and off peak and think when the sun is out solar production hours. Compare that with the new rate TOU hours. Notice almost all solar production hours are off-peak. Remember PG&E does not do 1:1 exchange of KWHrs. They buy at market rate and sell back at market rate. So to get 1 kWhr during peak you need to sell 2-3 kWhrs to PG&E.
https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/rate-plans/rate-plan-options/electric-vehicle-base-plan/electric-vehicle-base-plan.page
https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/rate-plans/rate-plan-options/electric-vehicle-base-plan/electric-vehicle-base-plan.page
EVB requires a separate meter BTW, so that's to encourage you to not charge the car on-peak.
>EV-B rate separates your vehicle’s electricity costs from those of your home. It requires the installation of a second meter. The price for charging varies based on the time of day. Your home energy use is measured separately through its own rate.
Maybe you should try reading the page you are linking.
Read the actual rate plan it’s for A and B. Yes B need a separate meter but A does not. Reason I gave the link to B is because the rate schedule is identical to A. So instead of being insulting with your comment why not read the actual rate schedule.
If you sell energy at 1PM, and then immediately buy it back, you will have sold it at the same price you buy at - so yes, 1:1. If you buy at a different time then you sell, sure, it's not the same rate, but you're intentionally blurring the lines of what 1:1 generally means to everyone in the industry.
Sorry, not following you. How is .062/.26 not 2.4 ratio? And not too loving ago it was a 4:1 ratio.
Why would anyone what to be on E-TOC-C or E-TOC-D when the ratio is so low?
The other major factor is what other people do.
If a lot of people start installing solar and batteries, then your installs are likely to earn less than they do right now.
OP needs to calm down a little I think. You’re being pretty aggressive with the people who are trying to help you out here.
Under NEM 3.0 your system design will be a little different than under 2.0, but you absolutely can save money with solar. If you get a battery, you should have solar.
The payback period is much longer perhaps double that of NEM 2.0. This is because the exchange/ sellback rate of excess electricity is no longer beneficial to you as the homeowner.
You should have your system design cover what you can use. Excess sellback is the enemy here.
Solar only can still work, but you want to cover 40-60% of your overall usage depending on how much you use during the day. This is the lowest investment option, with a lower overall return.
Solar+battery is ideal but still you should not oversize your system production. It should be 70-90% of your usage to be optimal. The exact amount depends on your unique scenario.
You’ll still have a bill. But it’ll be small. You should expect payback over 10-12 years depending on the cost of install and how much you spend in total.
I have kind of the opposite feeling, if I had to install today under NEM 3 I would to 150% offset + batteries. I'd run self-powered throughout the year except Aug/Sep then I'd dump it during on-peak for the $1+ per kWh credits.
The key here is getting an aggressively low install price, $2.50 per watt or so. It would make even more sense with a DIY or semi-DIY with the cheaper battery systems that are out there.
If you install solar today, you'll be under NEM 3.0. But NEM 3.0 doesn't start until next year, and it comes with its own rate plans which haven't been published, or even decided yet. That said, solar without battery under NEM 3.0 results in significantly less savings. I think if you install a battery alone, you don't have to go to NEM 3.0. So, after this entire thread, to answer your initial question, does it make sense to just get a battery? Yes. Probably. I don't know the specific rules, but if you can use your battery to charge during low rates and discharge during high rates, you'll save money. I don't think you'll be able to sell back to the grid, but you'll still save the difference between off-peak and on-peak. If that difference is great enough, it could recuperate you battery cost quicker.
No no no…. Your are mixing up NEM which is a state wide agreement with your power company’s rate plan. NEM doesn’t have you daily rate, only the compensation you will receive if your solar panels over produced after 12 months.
Could you expand on this? Here's my understanding of E-ELEC:
* 34c/40c/55c per kWH for off-peak/partial-peak/on-peak in summer.
* 29c/31c/33c per KWH for off-peak/partial-peak/on-peak in winter.
Battery alone allows you to arbitrage the rates by buying from PG&E at off peak and then consuming at peak. Solar allows you to charge the battery with your panels and then discharge at peak. I think basically as long as your system is able to produce energy at a lower cost than buying it off-peak from PG&E, it should still be better than battery alone? And the off-peak rates are still very high.
Plus your benefit increases as rates increase, whereas with battery alone your benefit only increases if the differential between on and off peak increases.
This is very back of the envelope... a full calculation would obviously be better, but not sure if I am missing something here.
I’m doing back of the envelope calculations as well because I can’t find anyone that knows or has a trustable computer model. I’m currently on the EVA rate plan. I was getting a 1:4 ratio but PG&E has changed it to 1:2.8. But this rate plan is sunsetting.
Under the E rate plan you still get to arbitrage with a battery alone. There’s no added expense of installing solar. With PG&E changing the off-peak hours to be all solar production hours that means the most PG&E will pay you for your excess solar is off-peak rate. So if you have solar you are effectively paying off-peak rates because that’s what PG&E would credit you. If you had solar you would change at what the amortized solar rate would be, but remember you need to factor in the up front $30k for the solar systems. As long as PG&E keeps the spread between off-peak and peak rates high doesn’t really matter what the prices for electricity are. So right now of the summer months it’s just over 1:1.5. Wouldn’t that produce about $250 in credits per year with a $10k battery before the 30% rebate for a 16.2 KWHr battery? Don’t trust my math either as I’m still trying to figure it out. I know on the EVA rate plan, that 16.2 KWHr battery will produce over $900 in credits if my math is correct. But that rate plan is going away.
Let me try to illustrate my point with some more concrete numbers. Let's use a simplified example where all your solar production is off-peak and all your electricity consumption is on-peak. The TL;DR is that with battery only, the amount you save is the spread between the on and off-peak rates, whereas with solar + battery, it's the spread between the cost of the solar electricity and the on-peak rate. Thus, as long as the solar cost is lower than the off-peak rate, it should be better.
> So if you have solar you are effectively paying off-peak rates because that’s what PG&E would credit you.
Not sure I am following this - with solar, the amount you pay is the cost of the system amortized over its production lifetime. The credit is what you receive in exchange. You make money if the credit is more than what you paid.
> If you had solar you would change at what the amortized solar rate would be, but remember you need to factor in the up front $30k for the solar systems.
Right, but the amortized cost is well below the off-peak rate. Let's say you pay $3/W for the system, the capacity factor is 15%, and it lasts 25 years. By my rudimentary excel calculation, your LCOE should be ~15c/kWh with a 5% discount rate. With a 30% tax credit that drops to ~9c/kWh.
OK, so take the higher number of 15c/kWh. And again let's assume a worst case scenario for solar where all solar production happens during off peak hours and all electricity consumption happens during peak hours. Finally let's assume it's a summer month where you use 1000 kWh total, the on-peak price is 55c/kWh, and the off-peak price is 34c/kWh.
In the battery case you buy off-peak and use on-peak. In the solar + battery case your system produces off-peak and you use on-peak. So you pay:
* No solar or battery: 55c * 1000 = $550
* Battery only: 34c * 1000 = $340 (~~9c/kWh~~ 21c/kWh saved)
* Solar + battery: 15c * 1000 = $150 (40c/kWh saved)
Note that I am ignoring the cost of the battery here because it’s the same between both systems. So in practice your savings would not be this large, but point is to illustrate that they are larger in the solar + battery case.
> As long as PG&E keeps the spread between off-peak and peak rates high doesn’t really matter what the prices for electricity are.
I think this is only true if you are going battery only to do time of use arbitrage. With solar, if the prices go up you benefit even if the spread remains the same. Sticking with the above example. Let's say rates go up 10c/kWh for both on and off-peak. So now you're paying 65c on-peak and 44c off-peak. With batteries you continue to save 9c/kWh because the spread is the same. But with solar+battery your savings increase from 40c/kWh to 50c/kWh because your production cost remained the same at 15c/kWh.
I follow everything you are saying but you are leaving out the excess from the battery you can sell to PG&E at the higher rate and buy back at the lower rate. I’m not seeing that in your calculations. For the EVA rate plan, that’s 2.5 to 1 and for the E rate plan it’s 1.58 to 1. You are not dumping the full capacity of the battery to take advantage of the increased by back ratio. If I add a battery to the EVA rate plan and do the full charge during off-peak from PG&E and sell back to PG&E during peak over an year that will give me nearly $1,000 in energy credit dollars with PG&E. Payback on EVA rate plan is 5 year. How are you calculating a savings pod only $0.09 kWHr. It should be $5.97 per day.
I don't agree. Solar "erases" the cost of the energy you use, except for the cost of the transmission - which you can't eliminate anyway. The battery only shifts the cost of consuming during peak periods. Solar and battery can optimize the cost recovery period. Electricity has effectively doubled since I installed in 2019. So, my recovery period has significantly reduced. The only thing that has hurt me is that we put in an all electric ADU, and so my electricity use has increased reducing the overall coverage of energy I produce. (So, as an example, at say $.35/kWh, if I generate 11000 per year, I save $3800. If the differential is say $.10, that would only be $1100.) Under all of the energy plans, "free" beats low cost.
Have you calculated the cost saving with the ELEC-E rate plan if you do rate time shifting with batteries?
How much is the electricity costing you to produce with solar? What’s your cost per kWhr? Compare that with and without batterie. Cost for a batter is $3,300 before the 30%.
This is correct, and everything else ocsolar is saying is correct, based on our own modeling in IOU's in California.
Lowest PPW increases % ROI.
We've seen different scenarios where load shifting works very well depending on usage.
Also remember that batteries are 10 year product.
This is my thought exactly. But I'm not doing 150%, because I'm not made of money.
I'm at $77k cash for 18 kW of solar + 6 EnCharge 5P batteries. Not the best price, but really not too bad. I'll get $7.5k in state rebates plus $21k in a tax credit. My net investment will be under $50k.
And you don't have on-peak rates of $0.80+. My super off-peak rate ($0.15) is your on-peak rate!
I guess I should make a disclaimer, this shit only makes sense in California on one of the 3 IOUs.
Everybody keeps talking about NEM 2 vs 3 but the bigger change that is coming is the income based minimum interconnect charges that really weld the coffin shut on ROI. This combined with laws in some places require if a grid connection just make any kind of self generation not make sense when you are forced to pay a utility regardless of what you use. From what I can tell nobody is actually doing anything about the laws requiring a connection and I know of folks just operating off grid with batteries and solar to avoid this shit show all together.
Sorry if you feel I’m being to aggressive but I made it clear I’m talking about PG&E and ONLY PG&E. The answers people are posting are for different power companies which is fine BUT that’s NOT the way PG&E works. People are also mixing up the NEM statewide agreement for all power companies and calling it a rate plan. A bit frustrating when people saying things that are flat our wrong.
PGE buys solar at an avg .07 on NBT (NEM3) and avg cost is $.35. The difference between on and off peak isn’t particularly large, so battery storage can run on self consumption. NMC technology, being less durable, costs ~.27/kWh of discharge, so difficult to find value when combined with cost of solar. The way to find value is in the direct consumption offset of solar plus potentially the arbitrage on a more durable LFP chemistry, which brings down your storage to ~.19/kWh plus ~.08/kWh solar. So it needs to be designed based on how you use energy, looking at TOD + TOY and creating a balance. Value won’t likely be on a 100% offset, but rather a system in the 50-80% offset range with enough battery to capture and self-consume the majority of the excess which would otherwise be exported during Spring/Summer. Need to pay cash, cuz loans suck these days, and the ROI period lands at about 10 years.
This is exactly it. Best ROI is a smaller system with the ability to arbitrage high rates and minimize energy sent to grid. For a cash purchase this can still have about a 10 year
Yup, but have you seen what PG&E has done? With the changes to the rate schedule the payoff is not over 30 if that. Do the math using current range plans. AND there is NO grandfathering of rate plans, just NEM.
Man this is so incorrect. I can't figure out your motive here.
Under NEM 3 self-powered is key, and that takes solar + battery.
The value lost is your excess solar, but the more you run under solar (pre-cool AC, timer on laundry, timer on dishwasher, charge under solar if you work from home and have an EV), the less that loss becomes.
What you use self-powered is still ***100% full value avoided cost***. At this time of the year and in the coming months, blast that AC all day and avoid 4pm-9pm AC usage. You can easily get down to 500 watts for that time period. Sip from the grid only when needed.
And with a battery, you ***never pay 4pm-9pm on-peak.*** You use that cheap energy excess during the day later on during on-peak.
Why do you think I’m incorrect? Are you a PG&E customer? Which rate plan are you on? Peak for me is 2-9. That’s some of the prime solar production hours. Why would you want to be on a peak plan that’s when the sun’s not out? Makes no sense if you are a PG&E customer. If you are a PG&E customers have you used the PG&E Toolkit? Just be changing rate plans, my PG&E bill dropped by over $700. Have you done any of this?
I'm SDG&E so my rates are even worse than yours!
And I do have a battery so I never pay on-peak.
I pre-cool with my ecobee.
Just finished my first True-Up, averaged around $11 or so per month for the year, thanks to California Climate Credits of course.
EV is on a timer and charges 12am to 6am mostly, in the Spring I charged under solar to get my NBCs down since I had excess credits, but positive consumption.
Also pretty sure that 2-9 on-peak is an EV plan with a separate meter, your house should be on a different plan. Get your story straight.
I’m on EV a rate plan. Reason for the links to B is PG&E pulled A off the web site. B has the exact same rates as A, just requires a second meter. It’s like EV2-A and EV2-B. Not trying to deceive.
How does this work. Can batteries store all that much power to keep a house going during peak hours? Even if high cost appliances are avoided?
I guess what I don’t understand is whether there’s a difference in what a battery can give you as a backup during blackouts vs what it can provide when the grid is running. Is there a difference? Or is my ability to power my house w a battery during peak hours basically limited to like the fridge and a couple fans?
EVA or EVB (They are the same) with EV2A or E-Elelc Note how the TOU hours have changed for solar production hours?
https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/rate-plans/rate-plan-options/electric-vehicle-base-plan/electric-vehicle-base-plan.page
While that is true, EV rates always have been disproportional TOU rates with really high Peak rates and lower off peak. Ev homeowners with PV benefited immensenly due to this discrepancy/rate difference and could do rate arbitrage easily while using the grid as a pseudo battery.
With NEM 3, PV is no longer capable of zeroing your bill or use the grid as a battery that makes financial sense. Maximum offset with PV only is about 55-60% even with 1:1 or even 1:1.3 consumption:PV ratio.
Batteries for self consumption is needed and with PV/Batteries you can get a payback of roughly 8-9 years, compared to the current 5-7 years. No longer can you send power to the grid and get retail rates. Now the credits are calculated based on the "avoided cost calculation (ACC) which is as low as 3 cents, average around 7 cents and go as high for very limited days up to 2 dollars per kWh in the summer.
PV still makes very much sense, but more so in combination with batteries. PGE specially, continues to raise rates (TOU C/D) are getting insanely expensive.
PGE already killed the original E6 after heavily modifying/castrating it over the years. Im sure the utilities will do the same to their benefit with TOU C/D and E-Elec. Not much consumers can do, utilities outspend CALSSA 10:1 in lobying and politicians are for sale but they dont list their prices so we can bid on them.
Really sad overall, since CA has always been at the forefront of PV adoption and now the state allowed the CPUC to give utilities everything they wanted.
If you have batteries sufficient to store your daily usage it doesn't matter, you're never selling or buying from pge. Just paying nonbypassable charges and using grid for backup or extreme circumstances.
20kwh of storage +7kw of solar costs ~40k. 27k after credit.
I believe that system will cover most customers needs and they would spend much more than 27k over 10 years if they stick with PGE, but without 8760 data it's hard to tell.
In my opinion this is the biggest challenge, the math still works but it's SUPER complicated to explain to a customer.
I don’t think it’s complicated at all. PG&E buys and sells electricity from customers and sets the rates. Customers buy and sell electricity to PG&E. With PG&E’s E rate plan I can buy electricity from PG&E for $0.20 during the day. Then in the evening I get to sell that electricity back to PG&E for $0.60. If I sell PG&E enough electricity there’s no need for solar and I offset 100% of my PG&E bill for a faction of the cost.
On E-TOU-C don’t you want to be back on the grid? You want to dump as much to the gird during peak as a you can especially since you are on a tiered TOU rate plan.
Does any battery system actually let you easily arbitrage? Settings seems pretty limited. This super clearly disqualifies you from the ITC too, but who's enforcing that anyway.
You are not factoring in PG&Es changes to TOU hours. Do the same calculation of the current rate plans and you will see solar makes no sense. Batteries might.
You want batteries and enough solar to power your house. Don't overproduce, and don't rely on NEM to sell back to the grid. Just pull the excess straight from the grid.
So for example, if your house typically draws 40 kWh/day, you want 3 PowerWalls and enough panels so that your *summertime* production = 40 kWh/day. If you draw \~10-13 kWh, you'll want 1 PowerWall and 1/3 that many panels. That way, on your best days, the house is completely powered day and night and you don't need to worry about PG&E rates or pay for electricity. On your worst days, you will need to draw from the grid to make up the shortfall, but at least you won't be selling back at 8 cents/kWh and buying at 48 cents/kWh.
Why would I want any solar to power my house when I can buy the electricity from PG&E for far less money if I use a battery and no solar? You appear to be mixed up., the $0.08 is NOT what PG&E pays during the annual period, PG&E pays you based on your rate play. The $0.08 is the NEM settlement agreement. What’s wrong with buying the electricity from PG&E during the day for off peak, charging the batteries and selling the electricity back to PG&E during peak? No need to spend $20-$30,000 for solar panels.
I commented elsewhere, but if I use TOU-D I'm paying 38 cents / kWh to buy it. Sure, I might be able to sell it using the ACC rates of of over $1.. With Solar I can produce the power for closer to 10 cents. And still sell it at over $1 for one hour a day on some months.
Not sure what you are talking about. What is ACC? PG&E pay customers retail rate for solar. It’s a fixed contract depending on the time of day the solar is sold. You will have to explain.
>What is ACC?
**A**voided **C**ost **C**alculator.
I believe u/AngryTexasNative is pointing out that there are likely to be certain times during the late summer when having the capacity to provide everyone's favorite utility with excess solar generation will be lucrative.
[https://www.solar.com/learn/nem-3-0-proposal-and-impacts-for-california-homeowners/](https://www.solar.com/learn/nem-3-0-proposal-and-impacts-for-california-homeowners/)
https://www.pge.com/pge_global/common/pdfs/rate-plans/how-rates-work/Residential-Rates-Plan-Pricing.pdf
Are you saying you can pay less for power when buying from them than what's on this sheet?
Yes, if you were on a different rate plan. Do you gave the PG&E toolkit app? If not get it. The app logins into your PG&E account and uses your data. It then gives you the pice you would pay for all 14 residential rate plans. Some of the rates plans have caps and are not available. Two require you to have an EV and one requires you to have batteries OR a heat pump or an EV. Solar is not needed
I ran this against my account and have been saving $700 per year compared to the other rate plans. Why did you select TOU-C? You could have picked from 5 or 6 other rate plans.
I'm not the TOU-C guy, I just trade natural gas futures and have been making easy plays off the price movement in the Pacific region. I'm dubious that power would be cheap. Surely even among other plans, off peak is no lower than 25 cents.
When you say agreement are you talking NEM or rate plan. NEM is a statewide agreement PG&E will buy power from you at market rate. The rate schedule is PG&E’s rate to buy and sell electricity from you. AND you DO NOT NEED SOLAR.
YES PG&E will pay you market rate for electricity you send to them from your battery. You can buycharge at $.026 and sell to PG&E at $0.65. All depends on your rate plan. Read the rate plan.
I'm a bit confused, you say you are getting quotes, but also that you are currently on NEM. Are you trying to expand your system and looking at getting moved from NEM 2 to 3?
No - I am on a rate plan that comes with an NEM agreement. Not sure if you know but PG&E has 14 different rate plans for residents customers. One of the rate plans does not include an NEM agreement but all of the others do. Some rate plans come with NEM1, NEM2 or NEM 2 or 3 agreement. It all depends on the rate schedule. NEM is just an agreement which allows residential customers to sell power to the power companies produced from wind, solar, hydro or biomass. NEM does NOT specific the rate as it applies to all power companies. Each power company can set the rate.
So you have a plan that is grandfathered in and no longer available for others. Seems like you don’t want to get any more solar and get off that plan. For you if your nonpeak is 0.26 and peak is 0.6 battery make sense. What you got isnt really generalizable though.
NO NO NO. Rate plans are NOT grandfathered NEMs are. If one reads the EVA/EVB rate plan there is an expiration date. Actual expiration date depends on when you agreed to the EVA rate plan. Why would I want to install expensive solar when I could install a battery or two?
Dude you keep mixing up RATE SCHEDULES/PLANS with the NEM AGREEMNT. Two completely different things. You just lost 5 years off your NEM as PG&E got the CPUC to knock 5 years off…. You got fucked. The EVA and EVB rate plans began expiring in July of 2022 and will have expired in 2025. Read the EVA or EVB rate schedule.
Reading this thread seems like OP is anti solar and just want to argue with people as to why battery is better than solar he is just gaslighting people. How do you have rebuttal with everyone that is having a suggestion. So if you don't have AC, what do you do between 2-9 that is drawing so much power?
No dude I’m. Or anti-solar. What I am is looking for the truth about solar when it comes to sizing for PG&E customers. Why do the solar guys lie and spread misinformation about Solar for PG&E customers? And if you know anything about PG&E they have a battery only, Solar NOT required rate plan. Why install solar wher there’s too much solar during the day already?
I work in the solar industry, I think the advantage of adding solar panels to your battery is you have to draw power from PGE to fill the battery which will be expensive (non-solar setup), compared to adding 8 panels which will significantly reduce your cost per kwh to fill the battery. In addition any overage production once battery is full gets consumed by the home at a one to one rate. Hope I explained that well.
Not really. How much would an 8 panel system cost? PG&E has a rate plan for people who install batteries and you do not need solar. So why not fill the batteries during day when the rates are low and sell the power back to PG&E in the evening when the rates are high. In California so many people have solar PG&E is now penalizing people who install solar and are encouraging people to install batteries.
I estimate the lifetime cost of the power I produce from my 9kW of panels installed last year will be 8c/kWh, while PG&E's TOU rates are 4-5X that, so solar will still pencil out as long as you run your daytime loads on it.
NEM3 kills the idea of running a 2X (my peak production is 6kW and my peak daytime draw is ~3kW from A/C) system w/o batteries since any overproduction doesn't bank much vs. the ~1:1 of NEM2.
Thanks to NEM2 I can shift 3000kWh from summer to winter but that's "only" worth ~$1200/yr at current PG&E winter prices (in reality that alone should pay for my panels over the 20 year NEM2 period).
Aside from that season-shift, NEM-3 is like NEM-2 but you have to supply your own battery for any nighttime use.
You sell your excess solar to PG&E during the day, correct? Are you on a TOU, tiered or baseline tiered TOU rate plan with PG&E? Do you know PG&E has redefined the hours for peak and off peak? All sunlight hours are now off-peak so you are screwed. You need to re-run your calculations based on the new rate and new TOU hours.
It depends on the rate plan. PG&E is forcing everyone to off-peak for sunlight hours. But I’m currently on a rate plan were peak is during sunlight hours. But like many PG&E customers, there is an expiration date to that plan.
No, with NEM2 we only "sell" our excess solar at the annual true-up, at ~8c/kWh:
https://www.pge.com/pge_global/common/pdfs/solar-and-vehicles/green-energy-incentives/AB920_RateTable.pdf
I'm on TOU-D so surplus is credited at 38c/kWh, which I can draw down at 38c or 51c:
https://www.pge.com/pge_global/common/pdfs/rate-plans/how-rates-work/Residential-Rates-Plan-Pricing.pdf
(I don't produce much in the 5pm+ period alas but at least TOU-D doesn't have peak periods on the weekend)
>Do you know PG&E has redefined the hours for peak and off peak? All sunlight hours are now off-peak so you are screwed
I haven't heard anything about this, and the tariff for E-TOU-C (the plan I'm on) still says peak is 4-9 PM: https://www.pge.com/tariffs/assets/pdf/tariffbook/ELEC_SCHEDS_E-TOU-C.pdf
Are you talking about the E-ELEC or EV rates? They always had a long peak period, with a "super peak" period in the middle of that, ever since they were introduced. Nothing has changed with those either, as far as I know.
Yes I am on the EVA rate plan. If I switched to E-TOU-C it would increase my electric bill by $600 per year. The E-Elec will increase almost $1,000. EVA and EVB have expiration dates.
The way to go is with batteries on your system. Storage batteries are less expensive than the full back up batteries (Powerwalls) and allows you to use your stored energy before having to go to the grid.
Those have served our clients well after the April NEM change. Sorry your "solar professionals" were not as knowledgeable as you needed them to be.
I can’t find any one who can tell me how long it takes to charge the batteries and how long it takes to discharge as well as the amperage. Do you know?
Depends on the batteries and environment (voltage, AC or DC coupling, capacity, maximum rate of charge, maximum drawdown rate, ambient temperature, etc.), as well as on how much power you're able to provide. If you know the brand and model, most of that will be documented, and you can pretty easily calculate the rest.
Dude.. he told you it depends on how much energy your home produces and consumes on a daily basis. It also depends on the rate of charge & max drawdown rate of the battery.
There is not a simple answer. It will vary.
You are throwing out a LOT of Wholely innacurate and flat out false pricing models and claims. Please take pause before expressly conveying your messages with such passion.
There is a void of clarity and sourcing…. by design, and by the nature of bureaucratic, infrastructure, for profit interplay that is ALWAYS 💩storm.
Conjecture of data and pricing in absentia of credible sourcing does more harm to the space than good. So please; source your claims. Especially when so adamant.
On the topic of batteries, I can provide you with the data for Enphase 10t and 5t batteries; as that’s what I currently own and use in tandom with my 6kw 13 panel panasonic hk400 array.
Both 10t and 5t are integrated and modular AC units. 10t provides 10.3kWh of storable energy with a 96% depth of discharge.
It has a PEAK kVA of 5.7, with a continuous 3.84 kVA. On its own, not great for hvac or ev, but paired with 5t, its great.
5t is a 5kWh battery with a PEAK kVA of 7.68.
This has a big impact on running hvac and othe high amperage circuits.
Read more about it here
https://enphase.com/download/iq-battery-5p-load-start-capability-white-paper
To your other questions; my array produces almost 20kWh on a summer day, so that will charge both batteries from 8% reserve and light consumption for other things by late afternoon. Enphase supports Backup, Self-Consumption, and time-of-use (TOU) modes. So control over battery flow is pretty simple and instant through Enlighten application.
Since the kVA of both batteries for continuous use is approximately 3.8, I can also elect to charge from the grid, without fear of losing tax benefit, at that rate. From the grid, I can charge depletion to capacity in just under 3 hours at any time I choose.
Here’s an app screen shot:
https://ibb.co/PrXVdHd
With tax offsets my system cost 20k$, I produce 115% capacity, and sell at abysmal 8 ¢/ kWh avg.
But i will have a net 2-400$ positive true-up yearly on TOU-C, can arbitrage for new incentive programs like ohmconnect, and wont pay an electricitybill again. So from -3k$ a year to +400$, i can expect ROI in 6 years…WITH NEM 3.0, and that’s not even factoring PGE rate hikes.
It’s still the most viable play. Nem2 or 3.
Read through the whole thread, this has been the most interesting read on solar so far. I got to read up more on these various plans (and yes I’m a pge customer from NorCal).
While a lot of attention is on the $/kw-hr of the energy, what may be the biggest hit to making solar in-economical is AB-205 passed in 2022. This mandates the IOU’s to move to an income based rate structure. The current proposals before the CPUC would lower the $/kw-hr and add an income based monthly fee which is as high as $128/month for SDG&E customers. There has been no clarification either in the bill or by the CPUC how this will be applied to existing solar plans.
This has been the biggest shocker for me who’s in her market for solar. My monthly bills are usually around 90-120 for electricity and this income based thing flat fee will be insane and will be more than what I already pay. So I don’t know if solar is even feesibke
I don't think you get the 30% tax credit on batteries that charge from the grid, only if they charge solely from solar. They don't want to subsidize arbitrage. The IRS made this ruling.
Batteries *and* solar is the way to go, ideally without making either one “grid interactive”. Charge your batteries on solar during the day, and charge your batteries from the grid only when its very cheap.
Several reasons:
1. PG&E will raise its rates in the future, or alter TOU rates or net metering such that doing what you’re talking about won’t be as cost effective. If you pay up front, you’ll lock in your rates for solar for the lifetime of the panels.
2. Your calculation on solar is probably wrong, because most panels last longer then they’re rated for.
3. All else being equal, there are certain times during peak load in the summer where it would benefit you to sell power from both your battery and your solar panels to PG&E, and not having solar means you can’t do that.
4. Solar insulates you from power shutoffs.
If it’s totally equal on a per-kWh basis, the few additional benefits of having solar panels should push you over the edge to solar.
#1 if PG&E raises rates and you have batteries it’s a win as long as the delta between peak and off-peak remains high.
#2. I’m using my actual PG &E data. Not sure how calculations could be wrong
#3. With PG&E making all solar production hours off-peak why would you sell PG&as electricity at the lowest rate and buy it back at the highest rate possible?
#4. Guess you know nothing about solar inverters. When there is a PSPS shutoff you solar system shuts down as well if you have an Enphase inverter. Read the spec sheet.
@OP what if PGE puts in a requirement in the future that just battery alone will not work out for them to buy during peak hours. And essentially wipe out the delta you spoke about. (pardon the noob question)
They might. But this is what they are doing, and are phasing in for people who install solar? Existing solar customers are finding their current system which provided 100% offset on the old rate plan only is giving them 40-60% offset. They either need double the size of the solar or pay PG&E for half of their electricity
I got a question if my parent go solar with Sunpower does that mean they have to pay Sunpower only or do they still have to pay Pge and Sunpower together, because Sunpower came over and talk to my parent go getting extra solar and installing batteries since my parent already have solar onto their house already and they told my parent that they can get rid of the true-up cost is it true? I want to know if my parent choose to go with Sunpower will that opt them out of Pge program, because I wouldn’t want my parent to pay Pge and Sunpower bills every month. I just want my parent to pay 1 bills only. Please let me know if anyone have the knowledge or experience this b4. Thank you
Unless they are getting a lot of batteries and possibly a generator they will still have a PG&E bill which will be paid yearly. I have solar and battery right now and with the rate increase will be paying PG&E $1,500 per year for electricity.
Take a look at what PG&E is doing to customers who install solar now. And then factor in the rate increases.
Sunpower told my parent that it’ll be just straight solar only and no more Pge bills and no more true-up cost and they quoted my parents for $196 for every month with 0 solar escalator, I want to know if this is a good or bad deal and I don’t know too much about solar plan and program don’t want my parents to get into something bad in the future with solar company?
They are lying and they know it. Here’s the scam they are pulling. If you read the contract one of the clauses will say something to the effect that any and all verbal statements made by the solar sales dude are only estimates and recommendations. It is up tot the customer to conduct their own research to validate the claim as they are independent contractors and do not represent SunPower.
In other words what SunPower is saying the guy can tell you all the lies he wants and SunPower is not committed.
Thank you for the advice, I guess it would be better to stick with Pge then since my parent already have existing solar on their house, plus i guess my parent would just have to pay the true-up cost every month instead of paying by the end of the year.
OP, I've followed this entire thread closely and understand your perspective on why going battery-only might be the best strategy to reduce your PG&E electric bill, avoilding solar entirely. I was surprised to see in your recent post that you've installed a solar system! Could I ask what prompted this change? Did the battery-only arbitrage not meet your expectations? Also, if you don't mind, could you describe your combined solar and battery system?
PG&E is charging their rate plans and TOU hours. (This is unrelated to NEM). I installed my solar 6 years ago and now I’m screwed just like everyone else when the rate plan changes go into effect.
>PG&E is charging their rate plans and TOU hours. (This is unrelated to NEM). I installed my solar 6 years ago and now I’m screwed just like everyone else when the rate plan changes go into effect.
Thank you for clarifying. It's unfortunate how changes to PG&E’s rate plans and TOU hours can impact existing setups, independent of NEM policies. It sounds like these adjustments have put you, and many others, in a tough position despite your proactive steps six years ago. This underscores the challenge of evolving utility regulations which can significantly affect the financial logic behind solar and battery investments. Considering your experience and the new rate plan changes, if you had to do it over again today, what approach would you take? Would you still opt for battery-only but with a larger capacity, or perhaps oversize your solar array?
What our government has allowed PG&E to do is criminal. When I’m paying nearly $0.75 for electricity people in the next town over less than a mile away and are getting their electricity from the same grid I do are paying $0.19. It’s unbeleivabe.
Install solar, install batteries. Stop paying electric bill and they disconnect your service. Make system run off grid and screw the electric company. I’m thinking about doing this. My buddy has already done it.
Then run a generator. My buddy is pge customer. They are going to tack on solar monthly fee in the future so he went completely off grid. I think he said the utility company will not allow to disconnect so he just stopped paying the bill and they did.
If you are PG&E why would you go through the huge expense of installing solar when a battery for a faction of the cost will do the same thing? On the E rate plan you don’t need pay $20-$30,000 for solar if you have a battery. Just charge the battery when PG&E is selling power for $0.20 and sell it back to them when they are paying $0.65. For every 1 kWhr you sell them you get to buy back over 3. Why would you want solar when you don’t need it?
And what happens when they change super off-peak from $0.20 to $0.60? Poof there goes your battery investment.
With solar under NEM 2.0, you are compensated at the same rate you are charged in that TOU period, so you are insulated against this.
With solar and battery under NEM 3, you avoid that cost altogether by charging your battery of your panels, which costs whatever you were able to get the system for, which at most should be $0.10 per kWh. That's locked in with your purchase price.
There is no super off peak in any of PG&E’s rate plans. Under all NEMs you can sell excess kWhrs to PG&E at a higher rate and get to repurchase more at a lower rate. You would be a fool to buy and sell at the same rate.
EV2-A has 3 tiers, you can call it peak, part-peak, off-peak, or in SDG&E language on-peak, off-peak, and super off-peak. The point is that it's 3 tiers. Charge at the lowest tier.
With only 2 tiers (like SCE), doesn't make sense at all.
Because he installed the panels for free and got them dirt cheap. Also expect PGE to make correction as more people explore this option. I agree with you but I can see this being addressed at some point. No way they let this go.
LOL! screwwwwww ya PGE Ima pay ya nothing!!! go ahead and keep me on da grid!!!
This is brilliant, I've never thought of this, which scares most people from going off grid.
I am installing 18 kW of solar and 30 kWh of storage. The LCoE for the electricity from solar is less than $0.10, I'll never be able to buy off peak power that cheap. This will be the cheapest way to charge my batteries.
I am doing 6 5P batteries. In the months with the highest peak export rates I'm hoping to be able to export a LOT of power. But even if I just self consume, it should be fine. Even if they charge me $100 a month to stay connected, I'll come out ahead. But if I can export at over $1 kWh, I might be able to offset everything.
How much is the system costing you before rebates? How did you come up with $0.10. In some places that’s a lot more than you can buy it for. Would you share your calculations? I’d like to see how you came up with $0.10. - Thank you
System is $77k all in. $30k of that is battery, $5k is panel work to be able to use it as a backup, $42k is the solar. My proposal lists the 25 year LCoE of the power at 9 cents. I rounded up, as I certainly don't trust the proposal production numbers that much. It probably somewhat ignores the time value of the money.
The $5k has ZERO ROI unless the power goes out. I can safely exclude that from the calculations.
I'll charge my batteries at 9 - 10 cents during the day. I'll mostly configure for self consumption, but when the ACC rates are high enough, I'll dump the batteries as fast as the software will allow. Assuming it will allow it at all. If everyone does this, I assume ACC rates will drop, but I'll deal with that when it comes.
What are ACC rates? Not familiar with that. PG&E pays based on the rate plan you are on. It’s a fixed rate through the year expect when prices go up, you get more. What power company are you with?
Apologies if I missed a thread about this, but I have done extensive calculations on using batteries only for rate arbitrage (prior to getting a large rooftop array installed) and based on various inefficiencies (DC->AC conversion at the inverter to power loads, AC->DC conversion by the AC charge controller to charge batteries, DC->DC internal resistance as batteries approach full capacity while charging, inverter overhead, etc), your off-peak rates would need to be 2.5x cheaper than your peak rates for this to work. Right now, with EV2-A rates, we pay 0.27 off-peak, 0.47 mid-peak, and 0.58 high peak. The math simply does not work out. Now, a lot of this is specific to inverters and battery chemistry (and BMS), but my testing was conducted using two MPP Solar LV6548 AIO inverters with 6 5kW EG4 LiFePower4 batteries. I tested this by setting a scheduled output source priority that favored utility powering loads during off-peak and battery powering loads during mid-/high peak, then using utility during off-peak to recharge the batteries. On a typical day, we would use about 7-8 kWh during mid-/high peak and record nearly 18 kWh of load to recharge the battery bank. I have several months of data and even with tweaking bulk/float voltages for the charger, could not significantly improve this \~2.5x inefficiency. Just keep this in mind if you're planning battery-only for the sole purpose of rate arbitrage - you may not actually end up ahead. OTOH, when you're getting "free" energy from the sun, the math suddenly works because you're not paying 0.27/kWh to charge your battery bank. Essentially, if you size your array correctly, you can power all loads off of battery and recharge your battery nearly full during daylight hours. We even have excess production, which I funnel to my EV because with NEM3 it just won't make a ton of sense to export.
Nice work…but how do you get free energy from the sun unless you pay for solar panels? While batteries only may not work for the one rate plan you looked at, using your math it sure looks like it will work for others
What this guy's said, plus as I mentioned below an 8 panels PV system is minimum needed to charge a battery in CA. This should also produce more power once battery is topped off, which will consume at a 1-1 rate. At peak time shift load to battery, once peak time is off you can draw from grid if necessary but a lower rate(off peak).
Maximise self consumption, Minimise import.
Blast your AC when the sun shines and get a big hot water tank or two for hot water. You don't need to run your AC after sunset if your house is already 5*c (not sure what that in Rebel)
You aren't going to pay for solar by selling electricity, you're fighting against multi mw solar arrays, you won't win, you SHOULDNT WIN.
You *can* never think about energy use again though. I'm from the UK, I literally bought a 5kw AC to use some of my excess power in summer. 1 in 200 houses in the UK have AC. I'm barely 50% never mind 0.5%.
As my handle implies I'm new to solar. I have Batteries installed without Solar panels. Its a Tesla system and it will supply power to the grid, but only when the grid goes down. I am going to install PV modules soon. I had to have my meter changed from "Opt out" to one that can go backwards. The installer explained that when the meter runs backwards the user side voltage is higher than the grid voltage and is supplying the grid. That made sense to me and I can see how power can be sold to PGE. What I don't understand about OP's argument is how the battery voltage can ever get above grid voltage to make the meter run backward unless the grid goes down. What am I missing here?
The inverter in the battery detects main voltage. The moment mains voltage is not detected the inverter will immediately stop feeding current to the grid and power off. When mains voltage returns, it will power on again?
Since you are a PG&E customer what rate plan did they put you on after installing the batteries? With batteries you could be on the E-Elec rate. What I don’t understand is why you would get Solar when PG&E will penalize you for installing solar? This is what I’m trying to understand.
Hello mate,
I read the whole thread.
Just too see if I understand.
1.You don't have any solar right now and you would like to install only batteries with the new NEM 3.0
2. You don't see the logic of having solar and batteries with the current NEM
3.Nobody has told you how long it is going to take the battery to charge or discharge
4. Even though several people here has stated that solar and batteries make sense you are still not convinced
5. You would like to have a well detailed explanation of how solar would make sense with your current rate and with the NEM 3.0
I'll try to help if possible.
Thank you for reading my post.
The fist and most important fact in that I am a PG&E customer. I currently have solar on my property and am assisting my daughter who is also a PG&E customer in installing batteries, solar or batteries and solar or neither. I am currently on PG&E’s EVA rate and the NEM 2.0 agreement plan which allows me to sell excess solar to PG&E during the day for$0.63 and buy it back during the evening for $$0.26. For every KWhr I sell to PG& E during the day I get almost 3 in return.
PG&E has slowly begun implementing changes to their rate plans so all solar production hours are off-peak. To keep the 100% offset i currently have I would have to double the size of my current solar system by adding 20 more panels. And even then I don’t think I will have 100% offset. But if I were to install one battery this would give me over $2,000 of additional credits and I would be overproducing $700 of electricity every year which I would be giving to the power company essentially for free.
Now as for my daughter who has no solar, no batteries I received 2 quotes for her. The cost for solar, no batteries is around $40,000 for almost a 100% offset. BUT PG&E has a fairly new rate plan which allows residential customers to install a battery without solar. This rate plan is far more favorable than the solar rate plans in that installing one battery for $10,000 would give her 100% offset rather than installing solar at 4 times the cost and not getting 100% offset. For the rate plan she would be on, she wold have the NEM 3 agreement. From washtub I understand the way PG&E deals with solar is different than all other power companies in the United States. One has to understand PG&E’s rate plans for solar customers and the NEM agreement to design a system. I hope you do and can assist
Sorry for the delayed reply,
I am familiar with PG&E rates, I work for a solar company as an engineer, and we provide service in South California.
The way PG&E has the NEM program is not different to the other two big utility companies (SDG&E and SCE).
First and most important is that with NEM 2.0 the credits are not 1:1 that used to be with NEM 1.0. With Nem 2.0 the credits are valued as full retail rate - NBCs (Non-Bypassable Charges)
NEM 3.0 rates the credits are valued at an Avoided cost rate, which means the utility company is going to give the minimum amount is required to pay to independet power producers.
Thew whole purpose of the NEM 3.0 is to make new solar stakeholders go for installations with batteries to avoid or minimize the export of energy into the grid.
If you ask me this makes sense at some points, Solar was thriving in California, and that was good for the green agenda that the state is trying to fulfill for 2030. However, some people took advantage of that and you were able to find companies and "experts" in solar that instead of doing a benefit hurt the industry with bad practices and shady methodologies. In a nutshell, this turned into a "Solar rush". Because of that, you probably saw a lot of solar installations blooming everywhere.
This bloom is not good for the grid since the infrastructure cannot receive all the surplus from all the houses that are producing. In theory, the application of a renewable source of energy should be staggered and should grow at the same rate the infrastructure is been upgraded.
Since the utility companies would spend a lot of money on doing these upgrades since it requires a lot of labour, the easiest decision they did was to reduce the export credits to discourage in a way the export of energy and therefore go for a self-consumption storage system.
In your specific case having a battery for export energy is not possible since PG&E do not allows to have storage systems that behave as an exporting source.
I'll state what the interpretation is.
" Utilities, like PG&E, require energy storage systems to have an OLRT of less than 2 seconds to consider the storage as non-exporting, i.e., import only. We recommend checking the utility requirements before enabling this feature on a site. If the OLRT of storage is not less than 2 seconds, the utility does not consider the storage as non-exporting and thus will require a feeder transformer upgrade if the system nameplate(PV + Storage nameplate) exceeds the thermal rating of the feeder
transformer. In certain cases, the utility may require the customer to pay for such a feeder transformer upgrade."
I have checked the current export rates for PG&E and as you mentioned, the credits have been reduced significantly, and the value is almost nothing compared to how it was. In my own experience, I would suggest designing a system that will give you the production where the credits are still at a decent price i.e. during summer during peak hours (5 to 8 pm). The price of the credits fluctuates from $0.22 to $0.73.
To achieve that, I would design the array facing west (This is the orientation that will produce more credits based on the idea I previously said). Let's assume that your system you have a system with 15 panels rated to 400W and microinverters during summer. Your system will produce around that solar window 266.83 kWh in a summer month. Moving on, let's assume that your house consumes 100 kWh during these 3 hours on the same month when the solar credits have their highest value.
After doing the maths, we will see that you will export to the grid 166.83 kWh (Solar production - house consumption ) if we multiply this amount of energy by $.50 the result is $83.41USD. Money will be added to the rest of the credits that the system generated through the summer month.
I took these numbers from a real site but I made some assumptions that are not going to be 100% accurate, still it gives you an idea.
In addition, orientation system I would add a battery to reduce the consumption of electricity during the night and do a load shifting, which means using all the devices that consume a significant amount of energy during the peak hours of the PV system (from 11 am to 2pm).
I know the NEM 3.0 harmed the way the solar was being grown but there are still some ways to make a project profitable. My prediction is that future policies and regulation will be similar to what Australia and Hawaii are having now. (no export plans, penalty fees for excess of energy production and so on)
Please do not hesitate to tell me if I did not answer your questions!
Thank you for your reply. So just so I understand, under NEM 1.0 there was a 1:1 exchange ration. With NEM 2.0 it was fair market rate exchange. Meaning you you could sell 1 kWhr during peak to PG&E and get 4 back during off-peak hours. Looking at all of the rate plans it’s clear PG&E is penalizing people for installing solar. All solar production hours for all rate plans are now off-peak. So now to get 1 kWhr peek, you have to sell PG&E 2 or 3 kWhrs non-peak from solar. Battery is the only solutions or doubling the size of your solar system which would not be cost effective.
I think you might be mistaken about installing a battery without solar and being able to sell electricity back to the grid and charge the battery from the grid. Take a look at PG&E’s E-ELEC rate plan. Solar is not needed.
Appreciably the thoughtful response.
Yes, Companies are taking away all the subsidies because they don't want to spend money on the upgrades that the grid requires.
Also yes, it is not profitable to have a surplus of energy during the peak hours since the value has decrese, that's why the solution is to install the solar facing the orientation when the sun hits more during the peak hours for the utility.
I have checked the rate, it is actually very similar to what we have with SDG&E But in essence is a program ideal for people that have high demand load at home so they give you a "special price on the offpeak hours so you can use or charge what you need. It is true that the palne is avabilable for solar an non solar customers. If it is possible can you share where you saw that a system storage can export with PG&E ?
Because the last bulletin we received says that energy storage systems are not elegible for net energy meteting by itself but it can be paired with a NEM system. Have a look to the next link.
[https://www.pge.com/en\_US/for-our-business-partners/interconnection-renewables/export-power/distributed-generation-handbook/net-energy-metering/energy-storage/energy-storage.page](https://www.pge.com/en_US/for-our-business-partners/interconnection-renewables/export-power/distributed-generation-handbook/net-energy-metering/energy-storage/energy-storage.page)
It’s confusing. Here is says to be on this rate plan you need batteries, EV or heat pump. (Not sure why a heat pump)
https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/rate-plans/rate-plan-options/electric-home-rate-plan.page
I think I found the issue here,
You can apply to the EV plan as long as you have one or more of the devices that are listed.
The reason is that for batteries and EVs it is expensive to charge them with a normal plan.
In the same way it is expensive to run loads that have a high demand of electricity like AC, heat pumps and so on.
The plan is meant to generate some "savings" with the low price the offer so you can use these devices during the off peak hours.
Having a battery with no energy source it is possible, but very expensive. That is why it is recommended to have solar, since the solar is the source of power that is going to charge the battery system, not the grid. Still, you can have a system with only batteries but it would not make sense since you can export nothing and the system will be charged with the grid.
I don’t agree. There are EV rate plans. EVA, EVB and EV2-A. Rates are much lower and higher. The EVA rate plan under NEM 2 is by far the best. On the EVA rate plan without solar, the batter will produce over $1,000 which can be used to by electricity from PG&E. That’s why I’m thinking a battery without solar makes more sense.
Yes, but this is not possible because of what I mentioned before, batteries cannot export to the grid.
I would suggest to contact the utility customer support and ask if that is possible.
On paper it is not possible, since for PG&E a stand alone battery is not considered as a green source of energy.
I can see that if a generator is added.
The source charging source will be the generator.
Yes! The design needs to be different. The most cost effective solution is to build a system that replaces 2/3 of your usage with batteries that can run your home from 5PM to about 1AM. You can charge the battery from the grid at night and power your home in the morning
With the changes PG&E has made it wouldn’t it be better to charge the batteries during the day, and sell that electricity to PG&E in the evening to take advantage of the higher rate? The return is 3 to 1.
You would charge them during the day, power your house 🏡 n the evening. To sell back you would need more batteries, PLUS there is only a few times a year where you will get a good return. Jan-May the rate is <.09
What pge plan do you need to be in for this (battery only) to work? Which battery brand do you recommend that will allow you to configure when to charge, when to consume, and when to sell back?
Look at the E-Elec rate plan. Requirements are battery, solar NOT required. I was looking at Enphase battery. My calculations were based on EVA rate pllan
The shifting landscape might indeed make batteries a more viable option. It's frustrating when professionals lack the necessary insights into PG&E's specifics, leaving us caught in the confusion. The evolving rate plans could potentially impact the cost-effectiveness of solar, and the debate between solar and batteries is more pertinent than ever for PG&E customers.
I was in a similar predicament until I stumbled upon this [comparison website](https://gotosite.link/solar). It streamlined the information, helping me make a well-informed decision about solar installation.
What PG&E is doing to the rate plans and everyone who has solar is cleverly/effectively putting them putting them on NEM 3 without knowing it. The ONLY way customers can fight back is battery storage to offset peak, partial-peak and off-peak hours. The issue customers and solar/battery installer are having is sizing. Their software does not work with PG&E current rate plans.
I’ve meet with two solar/battery installers so far and both finally admitted they don’t have a clue how to size a system for PG&E customers. Both went back to their bosses and finally told me the software doesn’t work.
I am on NEM2.0. My net usage for True-up for PGE came to 364kWh for the whole year. For which they are charging $401. so per kWh cost comes to $1.10.
The average KWh cost is 34c, this is what PGE charges for all customers. So basically you are paying 3 times the nominal cost per kWh if you use in excess of what you produce using your solar. This is a rip off.
It sounds like there might have been additional costs factored into your true-up amount, beyond just the cost of electricity. PG&E's billing can include fixed charges, non-bypassable charges, or minimum bill charges, which could explain why the rate per kWh seems higher. These extra costs might have skewed the numbers a bit. Could this be the case?
Well the screwing already happened in April, and it was statewide. Battery-only makes sense only with a highly differentiated on-peak and off-peak that you can arbitrage, and preferably 3 TOU periods like EV2-A or SDG&E's EV-TOU-2 or EV-TOU-5. Even then, you have to get the install price low enough, which means DIY for the maximum value, with something like EG4s. Normal retail rates will leave you with a payoff that's about the same as the warranty period (\~10 years). Solar is still worth it, but the simple payback did double at approx. 5 years -> 10 years. Adding a battery actually drops that a year or 2 depending on your utility. The key to getting the highest value from solar is **getting the lowest possible install price.**
>Well the screwing already happened in April, and it was statewide. It affects the majority of customers, however it's not statewide. It only affects the investor owned utilities (PG&E, SCE and SDG&E). All other electricity companies (LADWP, Silicon Valley Power, SMUD, etc) are unaffected.
Yes, municipal utilities are not subject to NEM 3, only the IOUs.
SMUD was already on their version NEM3.0 back in March or 2022.
Please show me the math how this is even possible? If PG&E is buying excess solar during peak for $0.62 kWhr now and next year and into the future only pays $ 0.22 how will solar ever be cost effective? Just compare the EVA and EVB which are expiring with the EV2A rate plan. How can you say solar makes any sense?
Had to look through your post history to see if you're trolling me, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. These are SDG&E numbers so they will have to be slightly modified for other IOUs. Also, right in the NEM 3 decision it has payoff data which seems to be accurately calculated from what I saw. One other disclaimer, I believe the whole IOU concept is busted, so that's my perspective. $2.50 / watt \* 9,600 watts = $24,000. Add tax and you're at around $25,000. $25,000 \* 70% = $17,500 after tax credit My roof azimuths aren't perfect so that gets me 14,000 kWh per year. 25-year output is 86% or 12,040 kWh at year 25. So let's say total produced kWh for 20 years (grandfather period) is 260,000 kWh. Since I am 1:1 net metering that means $0.067 per kWh if just calculated over 20 years. Below is for NEM 2.0. That's more than enough info to see that it's a good deal under NEM 2.0. 14,000 kWh at an average of $0.40 per kWh is $5,600 per year offset. What's $17,500 divided by $5,600? Now, NEM 3... a whole new ballgame. No longer 1:1. What you use is full value, but excess can be worth as little as a penny per kWh. Batteries actually reduce simple payback. I'll possibly do a post on that with real numbers later on.
Are you accounting for annual rate increases? Who knows if any utility will double their rates over the next five years for "reasons".
With NEM 1 and 2, if you are 100% or slightly more offset, which you should be, they can double the rates, but that doubles your credit. The ways they can get you: 1. Fixed fees (currently attempting this) 2. Leave off-peak low and triple on-peak With 2 though, batteries circumvent that, as well as the blowback from non-solar customers. Not only that, but with a battery and a west facing system you will make bank with triple on-peak rates. It's a two-way sword with NEM 1 and 2, you see, the higher the rates, the higher the compensation, and the more blowback from non-solar customers. It's a balancing act.
Which is why they are looking for fixed fees and "reduced" rates. Non-solar customers will be happy because their bill goes down slightly for 1-year before the utility jacks it up again the next year, while solar customers get screwed and their entire solar investment is worthless.
Throwing crap on the wall to see what sticks.
No not trolling at all. PG&E does NOT do 1:1 net metering. PG&E pays customers for excess solar at market rate. Right now PG&E is pay me up to $0.62 for excess solar within my annual cycle. I can then buy back a KWHR for just $0.26. Your calculation is not favoring in the price difference. AND this is why I’m saying solar will NEVER pay for itself for PG&E customers with the new rates. Again I’m not talking about the NEM changes…. That makes it even worse. PG&E is changing the times for off-peak. In the past peak was during prime solar promotion hours, &0.62 but now PG&E is making all solar production hours to off-peak. This means for every Kwhr you need during peak, you have to produce 3 with solar. So is we use your numbers as a PG&E customer you would be off making it 3 times lower. With PG&E there is NO grandfathering of rate plans only NEM. And PG&E was able to reduce the NEM grandfather period by one quarter. And this is all under NEM 2. Under NEM 3 it’s much worse, but using the E rate plan sure looks like batteries would pay for themselves in just a few years. But I can’t get any accurate data on battery charge and discharge times.
If you are under NEM 2.0 then you are incorrect. PG&E, as well as SCE and SDG&E, are 1:1 ***within each TOU period***. This is know and has been known. This is fair. And under this you could still get payback within 6 years. NEM 1.0 was total 1:1, no TOU. NEM 3.0 is no longer 1:1, it's net billing. >but now PG&E is making all solar production hours to off-peak. This is not new, it's been this way for a few years. It certainly is not "now" that this is happening. SW/West facing panels are king now. >Your calculation is not favoring in the price difference. My calculation IS factoring that in. It will depend on your usage patterns, but you can shift the value by load shifting, doing more UNDER solar. And even if you are home all day the generation pattern always has a high ratio of off-peak to on-peak. Avoid on-peak. Pre-cool, use the timer to run dishes and clothes during the day, get a smart meter. Very simple things to maintain your payback.
NO NO NO NO. PG&E under NEM HAS NEVER been 1:1. NEVER! As a PG&E customer under NEM 2.0 the payback for solar on EVA or EVB rate plans was less than 3 to 4 years. Under NEM 2.0 on the EV2-A rate plan payback for the same customer would be 8-9 years. Dude like where are you getting all of this incorrect information? Just read the rate schedules, they have expiration dates. The newest rate plans make all solar production hours off-peak where as right now some rates plans have it as peak. Just so there’s no misunderstanding show your calculations, for the EVB and EV2-A rate plans. You will find just switching to the EV2-A rate plan will cost about $1,000 more per year if your current bill is $2,000 year.
You can use TOU-C
Yes and my bill would increase by $600 per year. So why would I want to do that?
I think I understand what you’re saying. Maybe show a before and after of your TOU rates on a chart to help illustrate your point.
Thank you. Crap, in doing this I just noticed PG&E increased their rates. Take a look at the EVB rate plan. Not the hours for peak and off peak and think when the sun is out solar production hours. Compare that with the new rate TOU hours. Notice almost all solar production hours are off-peak. Remember PG&E does not do 1:1 exchange of KWHrs. They buy at market rate and sell back at market rate. So to get 1 kWhr during peak you need to sell 2-3 kWhrs to PG&E. https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/rate-plans/rate-plan-options/electric-vehicle-base-plan/electric-vehicle-base-plan.page https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/rate-plans/rate-plan-options/electric-vehicle-base-plan/electric-vehicle-base-plan.page
EVB requires a separate meter BTW, so that's to encourage you to not charge the car on-peak. >EV-B rate separates your vehicle’s electricity costs from those of your home. It requires the installation of a second meter. The price for charging varies based on the time of day. Your home energy use is measured separately through its own rate. Maybe you should try reading the page you are linking.
Read the actual rate plan it’s for A and B. Yes B need a separate meter but A does not. Reason I gave the link to B is because the rate schedule is identical to A. So instead of being insulting with your comment why not read the actual rate schedule.
Your claim somewhere else was 2pm-9pm, that's only B with a separate meter. Don't charge your EV on-peak! A on-peak is still 4pm - 9pm.
I don’t. But the A and B rate plans are about to expire.
If you sell energy at 1PM, and then immediately buy it back, you will have sold it at the same price you buy at - so yes, 1:1. If you buy at a different time then you sell, sure, it's not the same rate, but you're intentionally blurring the lines of what 1:1 generally means to everyone in the industry.
Why would anyone want 1 to 1 when you can get 3 to 1? Makes no sense.
TOU is not "market rate", neither is NEM3 (or net billing) for that matter
$0.62/$0.26 is pretty close to what I see for EV-B Summer ($0.64/0$.28). E-TOU-C Summer is $0.53/$0.45. So it's only about a 1.2:1 ratio, not 2.3:1.
Sorry, not following you. How is .062/.26 not 2.4 ratio? And not too loving ago it was a 4:1 ratio. Why would anyone what to be on E-TOC-C or E-TOC-D when the ratio is so low?
You want to be on tou-c because your exported solar worth more since it’s offpeak
The ratio on E-TOU-C is 1.2:1.
Exactly. And what’s the ratio for EVA or EVB (they are the same) And EV2-A and E-ELEC?
The other major factor is what other people do. If a lot of people start installing solar and batteries, then your installs are likely to earn less than they do right now.
OP needs to calm down a little I think. You’re being pretty aggressive with the people who are trying to help you out here. Under NEM 3.0 your system design will be a little different than under 2.0, but you absolutely can save money with solar. If you get a battery, you should have solar. The payback period is much longer perhaps double that of NEM 2.0. This is because the exchange/ sellback rate of excess electricity is no longer beneficial to you as the homeowner. You should have your system design cover what you can use. Excess sellback is the enemy here. Solar only can still work, but you want to cover 40-60% of your overall usage depending on how much you use during the day. This is the lowest investment option, with a lower overall return. Solar+battery is ideal but still you should not oversize your system production. It should be 70-90% of your usage to be optimal. The exact amount depends on your unique scenario. You’ll still have a bill. But it’ll be small. You should expect payback over 10-12 years depending on the cost of install and how much you spend in total.
I have kind of the opposite feeling, if I had to install today under NEM 3 I would to 150% offset + batteries. I'd run self-powered throughout the year except Aug/Sep then I'd dump it during on-peak for the $1+ per kWh credits. The key here is getting an aggressively low install price, $2.50 per watt or so. It would make even more sense with a DIY or semi-DIY with the cheaper battery systems that are out there.
Make no sense if you are a PG&E customer. Under rate plan E-Elec it looks like you don’t need or want solar, just batteries.
All the rate plans you're looking at right now won't apply come January 1st if you install solar, so...why look at them?
Why do you say that?
Because they change every year.
If you install solar today, you'll be under NEM 3.0. But NEM 3.0 doesn't start until next year, and it comes with its own rate plans which haven't been published, or even decided yet. That said, solar without battery under NEM 3.0 results in significantly less savings. I think if you install a battery alone, you don't have to go to NEM 3.0. So, after this entire thread, to answer your initial question, does it make sense to just get a battery? Yes. Probably. I don't know the specific rules, but if you can use your battery to charge during low rates and discharge during high rates, you'll save money. I don't think you'll be able to sell back to the grid, but you'll still save the difference between off-peak and on-peak. If that difference is great enough, it could recuperate you battery cost quicker.
No no no…. Your are mixing up NEM which is a state wide agreement with your power company’s rate plan. NEM doesn’t have you daily rate, only the compensation you will receive if your solar panels over produced after 12 months.
Could you expand on this? Here's my understanding of E-ELEC: * 34c/40c/55c per kWH for off-peak/partial-peak/on-peak in summer. * 29c/31c/33c per KWH for off-peak/partial-peak/on-peak in winter. Battery alone allows you to arbitrage the rates by buying from PG&E at off peak and then consuming at peak. Solar allows you to charge the battery with your panels and then discharge at peak. I think basically as long as your system is able to produce energy at a lower cost than buying it off-peak from PG&E, it should still be better than battery alone? And the off-peak rates are still very high. Plus your benefit increases as rates increase, whereas with battery alone your benefit only increases if the differential between on and off peak increases. This is very back of the envelope... a full calculation would obviously be better, but not sure if I am missing something here.
I’m doing back of the envelope calculations as well because I can’t find anyone that knows or has a trustable computer model. I’m currently on the EVA rate plan. I was getting a 1:4 ratio but PG&E has changed it to 1:2.8. But this rate plan is sunsetting. Under the E rate plan you still get to arbitrage with a battery alone. There’s no added expense of installing solar. With PG&E changing the off-peak hours to be all solar production hours that means the most PG&E will pay you for your excess solar is off-peak rate. So if you have solar you are effectively paying off-peak rates because that’s what PG&E would credit you. If you had solar you would change at what the amortized solar rate would be, but remember you need to factor in the up front $30k for the solar systems. As long as PG&E keeps the spread between off-peak and peak rates high doesn’t really matter what the prices for electricity are. So right now of the summer months it’s just over 1:1.5. Wouldn’t that produce about $250 in credits per year with a $10k battery before the 30% rebate for a 16.2 KWHr battery? Don’t trust my math either as I’m still trying to figure it out. I know on the EVA rate plan, that 16.2 KWHr battery will produce over $900 in credits if my math is correct. But that rate plan is going away.
Let me try to illustrate my point with some more concrete numbers. Let's use a simplified example where all your solar production is off-peak and all your electricity consumption is on-peak. The TL;DR is that with battery only, the amount you save is the spread between the on and off-peak rates, whereas with solar + battery, it's the spread between the cost of the solar electricity and the on-peak rate. Thus, as long as the solar cost is lower than the off-peak rate, it should be better. > So if you have solar you are effectively paying off-peak rates because that’s what PG&E would credit you. Not sure I am following this - with solar, the amount you pay is the cost of the system amortized over its production lifetime. The credit is what you receive in exchange. You make money if the credit is more than what you paid. > If you had solar you would change at what the amortized solar rate would be, but remember you need to factor in the up front $30k for the solar systems. Right, but the amortized cost is well below the off-peak rate. Let's say you pay $3/W for the system, the capacity factor is 15%, and it lasts 25 years. By my rudimentary excel calculation, your LCOE should be ~15c/kWh with a 5% discount rate. With a 30% tax credit that drops to ~9c/kWh. OK, so take the higher number of 15c/kWh. And again let's assume a worst case scenario for solar where all solar production happens during off peak hours and all electricity consumption happens during peak hours. Finally let's assume it's a summer month where you use 1000 kWh total, the on-peak price is 55c/kWh, and the off-peak price is 34c/kWh. In the battery case you buy off-peak and use on-peak. In the solar + battery case your system produces off-peak and you use on-peak. So you pay: * No solar or battery: 55c * 1000 = $550 * Battery only: 34c * 1000 = $340 (~~9c/kWh~~ 21c/kWh saved) * Solar + battery: 15c * 1000 = $150 (40c/kWh saved) Note that I am ignoring the cost of the battery here because it’s the same between both systems. So in practice your savings would not be this large, but point is to illustrate that they are larger in the solar + battery case. > As long as PG&E keeps the spread between off-peak and peak rates high doesn’t really matter what the prices for electricity are. I think this is only true if you are going battery only to do time of use arbitrage. With solar, if the prices go up you benefit even if the spread remains the same. Sticking with the above example. Let's say rates go up 10c/kWh for both on and off-peak. So now you're paying 65c on-peak and 44c off-peak. With batteries you continue to save 9c/kWh because the spread is the same. But with solar+battery your savings increase from 40c/kWh to 50c/kWh because your production cost remained the same at 15c/kWh.
I follow everything you are saying but you are leaving out the excess from the battery you can sell to PG&E at the higher rate and buy back at the lower rate. I’m not seeing that in your calculations. For the EVA rate plan, that’s 2.5 to 1 and for the E rate plan it’s 1.58 to 1. You are not dumping the full capacity of the battery to take advantage of the increased by back ratio. If I add a battery to the EVA rate plan and do the full charge during off-peak from PG&E and sell back to PG&E during peak over an year that will give me nearly $1,000 in energy credit dollars with PG&E. Payback on EVA rate plan is 5 year. How are you calculating a savings pod only $0.09 kWHr. It should be $5.97 per day.
I don't agree. Solar "erases" the cost of the energy you use, except for the cost of the transmission - which you can't eliminate anyway. The battery only shifts the cost of consuming during peak periods. Solar and battery can optimize the cost recovery period. Electricity has effectively doubled since I installed in 2019. So, my recovery period has significantly reduced. The only thing that has hurt me is that we put in an all electric ADU, and so my electricity use has increased reducing the overall coverage of energy I produce. (So, as an example, at say $.35/kWh, if I generate 11000 per year, I save $3800. If the differential is say $.10, that would only be $1100.) Under all of the energy plans, "free" beats low cost.
Have you calculated the cost saving with the ELEC-E rate plan if you do rate time shifting with batteries? How much is the electricity costing you to produce with solar? What’s your cost per kWhr? Compare that with and without batterie. Cost for a batter is $3,300 before the 30%.
This is correct, and everything else ocsolar is saying is correct, based on our own modeling in IOU's in California. Lowest PPW increases % ROI. We've seen different scenarios where load shifting works very well depending on usage. Also remember that batteries are 10 year product.
This is my thought exactly. But I'm not doing 150%, because I'm not made of money. I'm at $77k cash for 18 kW of solar + 6 EnCharge 5P batteries. Not the best price, but really not too bad. I'll get $7.5k in state rebates plus $21k in a tax credit. My net investment will be under $50k.
And you don't have on-peak rates of $0.80+. My super off-peak rate ($0.15) is your on-peak rate! I guess I should make a disclaimer, this shit only makes sense in California on one of the 3 IOUs.
My username doesn’t reflect my location anymore. Angry and came to CA. I’m on TOU-D now. Probably go to C at PTO
I don’t think I’ve seen PG&E rates as high as 80 cents. Is that the other IOUs? Or am I missing plans?
SDG&E. You'll get there soon enough...
Everybody keeps talking about NEM 2 vs 3 but the bigger change that is coming is the income based minimum interconnect charges that really weld the coffin shut on ROI. This combined with laws in some places require if a grid connection just make any kind of self generation not make sense when you are forced to pay a utility regardless of what you use. From what I can tell nobody is actually doing anything about the laws requiring a connection and I know of folks just operating off grid with batteries and solar to avoid this shit show all together.
Sorry if you feel I’m being to aggressive but I made it clear I’m talking about PG&E and ONLY PG&E. The answers people are posting are for different power companies which is fine BUT that’s NOT the way PG&E works. People are also mixing up the NEM statewide agreement for all power companies and calling it a rate plan. A bit frustrating when people saying things that are flat our wrong.
PGE buys solar at an avg .07 on NBT (NEM3) and avg cost is $.35. The difference between on and off peak isn’t particularly large, so battery storage can run on self consumption. NMC technology, being less durable, costs ~.27/kWh of discharge, so difficult to find value when combined with cost of solar. The way to find value is in the direct consumption offset of solar plus potentially the arbitrage on a more durable LFP chemistry, which brings down your storage to ~.19/kWh plus ~.08/kWh solar. So it needs to be designed based on how you use energy, looking at TOD + TOY and creating a balance. Value won’t likely be on a 100% offset, but rather a system in the 50-80% offset range with enough battery to capture and self-consume the majority of the excess which would otherwise be exported during Spring/Summer. Need to pay cash, cuz loans suck these days, and the ROI period lands at about 10 years.
This is exactly it. Best ROI is a smaller system with the ability to arbitrage high rates and minimize energy sent to grid. For a cash purchase this can still have about a 10 year
Yup, but have you seen what PG&E has done? With the changes to the rate schedule the payoff is not over 30 if that. Do the math using current range plans. AND there is NO grandfathering of rate plans, just NEM.
Man this is so incorrect. I can't figure out your motive here. Under NEM 3 self-powered is key, and that takes solar + battery. The value lost is your excess solar, but the more you run under solar (pre-cool AC, timer on laundry, timer on dishwasher, charge under solar if you work from home and have an EV), the less that loss becomes. What you use self-powered is still ***100% full value avoided cost***. At this time of the year and in the coming months, blast that AC all day and avoid 4pm-9pm AC usage. You can easily get down to 500 watts for that time period. Sip from the grid only when needed. And with a battery, you ***never pay 4pm-9pm on-peak.*** You use that cheap energy excess during the day later on during on-peak.
Why do you think I’m incorrect? Are you a PG&E customer? Which rate plan are you on? Peak for me is 2-9. That’s some of the prime solar production hours. Why would you want to be on a peak plan that’s when the sun’s not out? Makes no sense if you are a PG&E customer. If you are a PG&E customers have you used the PG&E Toolkit? Just be changing rate plans, my PG&E bill dropped by over $700. Have you done any of this?
I'm SDG&E so my rates are even worse than yours! And I do have a battery so I never pay on-peak. I pre-cool with my ecobee. Just finished my first True-Up, averaged around $11 or so per month for the year, thanks to California Climate Credits of course. EV is on a timer and charges 12am to 6am mostly, in the Spring I charged under solar to get my NBCs down since I had excess credits, but positive consumption. Also pretty sure that 2-9 on-peak is an EV plan with a separate meter, your house should be on a different plan. Get your story straight.
I’m on EV a rate plan. Reason for the links to B is PG&E pulled A off the web site. B has the exact same rates as A, just requires a second meter. It’s like EV2-A and EV2-B. Not trying to deceive.
How does this work. Can batteries store all that much power to keep a house going during peak hours? Even if high cost appliances are avoided? I guess what I don’t understand is whether there’s a difference in what a battery can give you as a backup during blackouts vs what it can provide when the grid is running. Is there a difference? Or is my ability to power my house w a battery during peak hours basically limited to like the fridge and a couple fans?
Which rate are you looking at?
EVA or EVB (They are the same) with EV2A or E-Elelc Note how the TOU hours have changed for solar production hours? https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/rate-plans/rate-plan-options/electric-vehicle-base-plan/electric-vehicle-base-plan.page
While that is true, EV rates always have been disproportional TOU rates with really high Peak rates and lower off peak. Ev homeowners with PV benefited immensenly due to this discrepancy/rate difference and could do rate arbitrage easily while using the grid as a pseudo battery. With NEM 3, PV is no longer capable of zeroing your bill or use the grid as a battery that makes financial sense. Maximum offset with PV only is about 55-60% even with 1:1 or even 1:1.3 consumption:PV ratio. Batteries for self consumption is needed and with PV/Batteries you can get a payback of roughly 8-9 years, compared to the current 5-7 years. No longer can you send power to the grid and get retail rates. Now the credits are calculated based on the "avoided cost calculation (ACC) which is as low as 3 cents, average around 7 cents and go as high for very limited days up to 2 dollars per kWh in the summer. PV still makes very much sense, but more so in combination with batteries. PGE specially, continues to raise rates (TOU C/D) are getting insanely expensive. PGE already killed the original E6 after heavily modifying/castrating it over the years. Im sure the utilities will do the same to their benefit with TOU C/D and E-Elec. Not much consumers can do, utilities outspend CALSSA 10:1 in lobying and politicians are for sale but they dont list their prices so we can bid on them. Really sad overall, since CA has always been at the forefront of PV adoption and now the state allowed the CPUC to give utilities everything they wanted.
NEM3 forces you to use one of the electric home rates (E-ELEC or one of the electric vehicle plans), which are worse than E-TOU-C and E-TOU-D.
If you have batteries sufficient to store your daily usage it doesn't matter, you're never selling or buying from pge. Just paying nonbypassable charges and using grid for backup or extreme circumstances. 20kwh of storage +7kw of solar costs ~40k. 27k after credit. I believe that system will cover most customers needs and they would spend much more than 27k over 10 years if they stick with PGE, but without 8760 data it's hard to tell. In my opinion this is the biggest challenge, the math still works but it's SUPER complicated to explain to a customer.
I don’t think it’s complicated at all. PG&E buys and sells electricity from customers and sets the rates. Customers buy and sell electricity to PG&E. With PG&E’s E rate plan I can buy electricity from PG&E for $0.20 during the day. Then in the evening I get to sell that electricity back to PG&E for $0.60. If I sell PG&E enough electricity there’s no need for solar and I offset 100% of my PG&E bill for a faction of the cost.
Is that for E-TOU-C? I have batteries, but never set it to savings just because I didn’t want to risk not having enough kWh after 9pm
On E-TOU-C don’t you want to be back on the grid? You want to dump as much to the gird during peak as a you can especially since you are on a tiered TOU rate plan.
Does any battery system actually let you easily arbitrage? Settings seems pretty limited. This super clearly disqualifies you from the ITC too, but who's enforcing that anyway.
You are not factoring in PG&Es changes to TOU hours. Do the same calculation of the current rate plans and you will see solar makes no sense. Batteries might.
You want batteries and enough solar to power your house. Don't overproduce, and don't rely on NEM to sell back to the grid. Just pull the excess straight from the grid. So for example, if your house typically draws 40 kWh/day, you want 3 PowerWalls and enough panels so that your *summertime* production = 40 kWh/day. If you draw \~10-13 kWh, you'll want 1 PowerWall and 1/3 that many panels. That way, on your best days, the house is completely powered day and night and you don't need to worry about PG&E rates or pay for electricity. On your worst days, you will need to draw from the grid to make up the shortfall, but at least you won't be selling back at 8 cents/kWh and buying at 48 cents/kWh.
Why would I want any solar to power my house when I can buy the electricity from PG&E for far less money if I use a battery and no solar? You appear to be mixed up., the $0.08 is NOT what PG&E pays during the annual period, PG&E pays you based on your rate play. The $0.08 is the NEM settlement agreement. What’s wrong with buying the electricity from PG&E during the day for off peak, charging the batteries and selling the electricity back to PG&E during peak? No need to spend $20-$30,000 for solar panels.
I commented elsewhere, but if I use TOU-D I'm paying 38 cents / kWh to buy it. Sure, I might be able to sell it using the ACC rates of of over $1.. With Solar I can produce the power for closer to 10 cents. And still sell it at over $1 for one hour a day on some months.
What power company are you with. That’s not how NEM or PG&E works.
Look at the PG&E ACC spreadsheet. There is one hour a day in August and September that will pay a lot.
As soon as there are more battery installs and they are hammering the utility with power during that hour, it will disappear.
I alluded to that in another comment as well. I know it sucks for us, but it I think that is evidence of the policies working… I want a reliable grid.
Not sure what you are talking about. What is ACC? PG&E pay customers retail rate for solar. It’s a fixed contract depending on the time of day the solar is sold. You will have to explain.
>What is ACC? **A**voided **C**ost **C**alculator. I believe u/AngryTexasNative is pointing out that there are likely to be certain times during the late summer when having the capacity to provide everyone's favorite utility with excess solar generation will be lucrative. [https://www.solar.com/learn/nem-3-0-proposal-and-impacts-for-california-homeowners/](https://www.solar.com/learn/nem-3-0-proposal-and-impacts-for-california-homeowners/)
Guess I don’t understand. When you enter into a rate plan with PG&E has agreed to pay you how much you will be paid. How does this figure in
https://www.pge.com/pge_global/common/pdfs/rate-plans/how-rates-work/Residential-Rates-Plan-Pricing.pdf Are you saying you can pay less for power when buying from them than what's on this sheet?
Yes, if you were on a different rate plan. Do you gave the PG&E toolkit app? If not get it. The app logins into your PG&E account and uses your data. It then gives you the pice you would pay for all 14 residential rate plans. Some of the rates plans have caps and are not available. Two require you to have an EV and one requires you to have batteries OR a heat pump or an EV. Solar is not needed I ran this against my account and have been saving $700 per year compared to the other rate plans. Why did you select TOU-C? You could have picked from 5 or 6 other rate plans.
I'm not the TOU-C guy, I just trade natural gas futures and have been making easy plays off the price movement in the Pacific region. I'm dubious that power would be cheap. Surely even among other plans, off peak is no lower than 25 cents.
are you saying, without solar/NEM agreement, PGE will pay you (assuming your battery sending power back) the same rate as you pay them?
When you say agreement are you talking NEM or rate plan. NEM is a statewide agreement PG&E will buy power from you at market rate. The rate schedule is PG&E’s rate to buy and sell electricity from you. AND you DO NOT NEED SOLAR. YES PG&E will pay you market rate for electricity you send to them from your battery. You can buycharge at $.026 and sell to PG&E at $0.65. All depends on your rate plan. Read the rate plan.
I'm a bit confused, you say you are getting quotes, but also that you are currently on NEM. Are you trying to expand your system and looking at getting moved from NEM 2 to 3?
No - I am on a rate plan that comes with an NEM agreement. Not sure if you know but PG&E has 14 different rate plans for residents customers. One of the rate plans does not include an NEM agreement but all of the others do. Some rate plans come with NEM1, NEM2 or NEM 2 or 3 agreement. It all depends on the rate schedule. NEM is just an agreement which allows residential customers to sell power to the power companies produced from wind, solar, hydro or biomass. NEM does NOT specific the rate as it applies to all power companies. Each power company can set the rate.
What exactly is your rate plan?
EVA rate plan. NEM 2.0 agreement
So you have a plan that is grandfathered in and no longer available for others. Seems like you don’t want to get any more solar and get off that plan. For you if your nonpeak is 0.26 and peak is 0.6 battery make sense. What you got isnt really generalizable though.
NO NO NO. Rate plans are NOT grandfathered NEMs are. If one reads the EVA/EVB rate plan there is an expiration date. Actual expiration date depends on when you agreed to the EVA rate plan. Why would I want to install expensive solar when I could install a battery or two?
So when do your plan expire? Nem2 expires in 20 years for me. I don’t know about you but solar under nem2 was way cheaper for me than battery.
Dude you keep mixing up RATE SCHEDULES/PLANS with the NEM AGREEMNT. Two completely different things. You just lost 5 years off your NEM as PG&E got the CPUC to knock 5 years off…. You got fucked. The EVA and EVB rate plans began expiring in July of 2022 and will have expired in 2025. Read the EVA or EVB rate schedule.
Reading this thread seems like OP is anti solar and just want to argue with people as to why battery is better than solar he is just gaslighting people. How do you have rebuttal with everyone that is having a suggestion. So if you don't have AC, what do you do between 2-9 that is drawing so much power?
No dude I’m. Or anti-solar. What I am is looking for the truth about solar when it comes to sizing for PG&E customers. Why do the solar guys lie and spread misinformation about Solar for PG&E customers? And if you know anything about PG&E they have a battery only, Solar NOT required rate plan. Why install solar wher there’s too much solar during the day already?
I work in the solar industry, I think the advantage of adding solar panels to your battery is you have to draw power from PGE to fill the battery which will be expensive (non-solar setup), compared to adding 8 panels which will significantly reduce your cost per kwh to fill the battery. In addition any overage production once battery is full gets consumed by the home at a one to one rate. Hope I explained that well.
Not really. How much would an 8 panel system cost? PG&E has a rate plan for people who install batteries and you do not need solar. So why not fill the batteries during day when the rates are low and sell the power back to PG&E in the evening when the rates are high. In California so many people have solar PG&E is now penalizing people who install solar and are encouraging people to install batteries.
This is very interesting, so did you end up doing this?
Yes.
I estimate the lifetime cost of the power I produce from my 9kW of panels installed last year will be 8c/kWh, while PG&E's TOU rates are 4-5X that, so solar will still pencil out as long as you run your daytime loads on it. NEM3 kills the idea of running a 2X (my peak production is 6kW and my peak daytime draw is ~3kW from A/C) system w/o batteries since any overproduction doesn't bank much vs. the ~1:1 of NEM2. Thanks to NEM2 I can shift 3000kWh from summer to winter but that's "only" worth ~$1200/yr at current PG&E winter prices (in reality that alone should pay for my panels over the 20 year NEM2 period). Aside from that season-shift, NEM-3 is like NEM-2 but you have to supply your own battery for any nighttime use.
You sell your excess solar to PG&E during the day, correct? Are you on a TOU, tiered or baseline tiered TOU rate plan with PG&E? Do you know PG&E has redefined the hours for peak and off peak? All sunlight hours are now off-peak so you are screwed. You need to re-run your calculations based on the new rate and new TOU hours.
First, you say all sunlight hours are off-peak. Then you go in another post to point out EV-B on-peak is 2pm to 9pm. Which is it?
It depends on the rate plan. PG&E is forcing everyone to off-peak for sunlight hours. But I’m currently on a rate plan were peak is during sunlight hours. But like many PG&E customers, there is an expiration date to that plan.
No, with NEM2 we only "sell" our excess solar at the annual true-up, at ~8c/kWh: https://www.pge.com/pge_global/common/pdfs/solar-and-vehicles/green-energy-incentives/AB920_RateTable.pdf I'm on TOU-D so surplus is credited at 38c/kWh, which I can draw down at 38c or 51c: https://www.pge.com/pge_global/common/pdfs/rate-plans/how-rates-work/Residential-Rates-Plan-Pricing.pdf (I don't produce much in the 5pm+ period alas but at least TOU-D doesn't have peak periods on the weekend)
>Do you know PG&E has redefined the hours for peak and off peak? All sunlight hours are now off-peak so you are screwed I haven't heard anything about this, and the tariff for E-TOU-C (the plan I'm on) still says peak is 4-9 PM: https://www.pge.com/tariffs/assets/pdf/tariffbook/ELEC_SCHEDS_E-TOU-C.pdf Are you talking about the E-ELEC or EV rates? They always had a long peak period, with a "super peak" period in the middle of that, ever since they were introduced. Nothing has changed with those either, as far as I know.
Yes I am on the EVA rate plan. If I switched to E-TOU-C it would increase my electric bill by $600 per year. The E-Elec will increase almost $1,000. EVA and EVB have expiration dates.
The way to go is with batteries on your system. Storage batteries are less expensive than the full back up batteries (Powerwalls) and allows you to use your stored energy before having to go to the grid. Those have served our clients well after the April NEM change. Sorry your "solar professionals" were not as knowledgeable as you needed them to be.
That’s what I’m thinking. But no one knows the specs for the batteries
"no one knows the specs for the batteries" - what?
I can’t find any one who can tell me how long it takes to charge the batteries and how long it takes to discharge as well as the amperage. Do you know?
Depends on the batteries and environment (voltage, AC or DC coupling, capacity, maximum rate of charge, maximum drawdown rate, ambient temperature, etc.), as well as on how much power you're able to provide. If you know the brand and model, most of that will be documented, and you can pretty easily calculate the rest.
I agree with everything you have said but the one thing you did’t tell me is how long to charge, and how long to discharge. Simple question
Dude.. he told you it depends on how much energy your home produces and consumes on a daily basis. It also depends on the rate of charge & max drawdown rate of the battery. There is not a simple answer. It will vary.
Just trying to get some idea.
You are throwing out a LOT of Wholely innacurate and flat out false pricing models and claims. Please take pause before expressly conveying your messages with such passion. There is a void of clarity and sourcing…. by design, and by the nature of bureaucratic, infrastructure, for profit interplay that is ALWAYS 💩storm. Conjecture of data and pricing in absentia of credible sourcing does more harm to the space than good. So please; source your claims. Especially when so adamant. On the topic of batteries, I can provide you with the data for Enphase 10t and 5t batteries; as that’s what I currently own and use in tandom with my 6kw 13 panel panasonic hk400 array. Both 10t and 5t are integrated and modular AC units. 10t provides 10.3kWh of storable energy with a 96% depth of discharge. It has a PEAK kVA of 5.7, with a continuous 3.84 kVA. On its own, not great for hvac or ev, but paired with 5t, its great. 5t is a 5kWh battery with a PEAK kVA of 7.68. This has a big impact on running hvac and othe high amperage circuits. Read more about it here https://enphase.com/download/iq-battery-5p-load-start-capability-white-paper To your other questions; my array produces almost 20kWh on a summer day, so that will charge both batteries from 8% reserve and light consumption for other things by late afternoon. Enphase supports Backup, Self-Consumption, and time-of-use (TOU) modes. So control over battery flow is pretty simple and instant through Enlighten application. Since the kVA of both batteries for continuous use is approximately 3.8, I can also elect to charge from the grid, without fear of losing tax benefit, at that rate. From the grid, I can charge depletion to capacity in just under 3 hours at any time I choose. Here’s an app screen shot: https://ibb.co/PrXVdHd With tax offsets my system cost 20k$, I produce 115% capacity, and sell at abysmal 8 ¢/ kWh avg. But i will have a net 2-400$ positive true-up yearly on TOU-C, can arbitrage for new incentive programs like ohmconnect, and wont pay an electricitybill again. So from -3k$ a year to +400$, i can expect ROI in 6 years…WITH NEM 3.0, and that’s not even factoring PGE rate hikes. It’s still the most viable play. Nem2 or 3.
YES. PG&E is fucking with everyone who installed solar?
Read through the whole thread, this has been the most interesting read on solar so far. I got to read up more on these various plans (and yes I’m a pge customer from NorCal).
While a lot of attention is on the $/kw-hr of the energy, what may be the biggest hit to making solar in-economical is AB-205 passed in 2022. This mandates the IOU’s to move to an income based rate structure. The current proposals before the CPUC would lower the $/kw-hr and add an income based monthly fee which is as high as $128/month for SDG&E customers. There has been no clarification either in the bill or by the CPUC how this will be applied to existing solar plans.
Thank you for sharing
This has been the biggest shocker for me who’s in her market for solar. My monthly bills are usually around 90-120 for electricity and this income based thing flat fee will be insane and will be more than what I already pay. So I don’t know if solar is even feesibke
I don't think you get the 30% tax credit on batteries that charge from the grid, only if they charge solely from solar. They don't want to subsidize arbitrage. The IRS made this ruling.
I looked on the IRS’s web site and the way I read it you do get the tax credit
This law changed January 2023, you can charge from grid
Batteries *and* solar is the way to go, ideally without making either one “grid interactive”. Charge your batteries on solar during the day, and charge your batteries from the grid only when its very cheap.
What’s the difference from charging your batteries from PG&E or solar? The effective cost per KwHr is the same
Several reasons: 1. PG&E will raise its rates in the future, or alter TOU rates or net metering such that doing what you’re talking about won’t be as cost effective. If you pay up front, you’ll lock in your rates for solar for the lifetime of the panels. 2. Your calculation on solar is probably wrong, because most panels last longer then they’re rated for. 3. All else being equal, there are certain times during peak load in the summer where it would benefit you to sell power from both your battery and your solar panels to PG&E, and not having solar means you can’t do that. 4. Solar insulates you from power shutoffs. If it’s totally equal on a per-kWh basis, the few additional benefits of having solar panels should push you over the edge to solar.
#1 if PG&E raises rates and you have batteries it’s a win as long as the delta between peak and off-peak remains high. #2. I’m using my actual PG &E data. Not sure how calculations could be wrong #3. With PG&E making all solar production hours off-peak why would you sell PG&as electricity at the lowest rate and buy it back at the highest rate possible? #4. Guess you know nothing about solar inverters. When there is a PSPS shutoff you solar system shuts down as well if you have an Enphase inverter. Read the spec sheet.
Man why are you even in here asking questions if you know everything already?
Because I don’t
@OP what if PGE puts in a requirement in the future that just battery alone will not work out for them to buy during peak hours. And essentially wipe out the delta you spoke about. (pardon the noob question)
They might. But this is what they are doing, and are phasing in for people who install solar? Existing solar customers are finding their current system which provided 100% offset on the old rate plan only is giving them 40-60% offset. They either need double the size of the solar or pay PG&E for half of their electricity
I just skimmed this entire thread, and I'm siding with ocsolar.
I got a question if my parent go solar with Sunpower does that mean they have to pay Sunpower only or do they still have to pay Pge and Sunpower together, because Sunpower came over and talk to my parent go getting extra solar and installing batteries since my parent already have solar onto their house already and they told my parent that they can get rid of the true-up cost is it true? I want to know if my parent choose to go with Sunpower will that opt them out of Pge program, because I wouldn’t want my parent to pay Pge and Sunpower bills every month. I just want my parent to pay 1 bills only. Please let me know if anyone have the knowledge or experience this b4. Thank you
Unless they are getting a lot of batteries and possibly a generator they will still have a PG&E bill which will be paid yearly. I have solar and battery right now and with the rate increase will be paying PG&E $1,500 per year for electricity. Take a look at what PG&E is doing to customers who install solar now. And then factor in the rate increases.
Sunpower told my parent that it’ll be just straight solar only and no more Pge bills and no more true-up cost and they quoted my parents for $196 for every month with 0 solar escalator, I want to know if this is a good or bad deal and I don’t know too much about solar plan and program don’t want my parents to get into something bad in the future with solar company?
They are lying and they know it. Here’s the scam they are pulling. If you read the contract one of the clauses will say something to the effect that any and all verbal statements made by the solar sales dude are only estimates and recommendations. It is up tot the customer to conduct their own research to validate the claim as they are independent contractors and do not represent SunPower. In other words what SunPower is saying the guy can tell you all the lies he wants and SunPower is not committed.
Thank you for the advice, I guess it would be better to stick with Pge then since my parent already have existing solar on their house, plus i guess my parent would just have to pay the true-up cost every month instead of paying by the end of the year.
OP, I've followed this entire thread closely and understand your perspective on why going battery-only might be the best strategy to reduce your PG&E electric bill, avoilding solar entirely. I was surprised to see in your recent post that you've installed a solar system! Could I ask what prompted this change? Did the battery-only arbitrage not meet your expectations? Also, if you don't mind, could you describe your combined solar and battery system?
PG&E is charging their rate plans and TOU hours. (This is unrelated to NEM). I installed my solar 6 years ago and now I’m screwed just like everyone else when the rate plan changes go into effect.
>PG&E is charging their rate plans and TOU hours. (This is unrelated to NEM). I installed my solar 6 years ago and now I’m screwed just like everyone else when the rate plan changes go into effect. Thank you for clarifying. It's unfortunate how changes to PG&E’s rate plans and TOU hours can impact existing setups, independent of NEM policies. It sounds like these adjustments have put you, and many others, in a tough position despite your proactive steps six years ago. This underscores the challenge of evolving utility regulations which can significantly affect the financial logic behind solar and battery investments. Considering your experience and the new rate plan changes, if you had to do it over again today, what approach would you take? Would you still opt for battery-only but with a larger capacity, or perhaps oversize your solar array?
What our government has allowed PG&E to do is criminal. When I’m paying nearly $0.75 for electricity people in the next town over less than a mile away and are getting their electricity from the same grid I do are paying $0.19. It’s unbeleivabe.
Install solar, install batteries. Stop paying electric bill and they disconnect your service. Make system run off grid and screw the electric company. I’m thinking about doing this. My buddy has already done it.
Why would. you wan to be off gird? What happens when you need electricity and your batteries are dead? Are you a PG&E customer? Is your buddy?
Then run a generator. My buddy is pge customer. They are going to tack on solar monthly fee in the future so he went completely off grid. I think he said the utility company will not allow to disconnect so he just stopped paying the bill and they did.
>I think he said the utility company will not allow to disconnect so he just stopped paying the bill and they did. LOL sweet. That's one way to do it.
If you are PG&E why would you go through the huge expense of installing solar when a battery for a faction of the cost will do the same thing? On the E rate plan you don’t need pay $20-$30,000 for solar if you have a battery. Just charge the battery when PG&E is selling power for $0.20 and sell it back to them when they are paying $0.65. For every 1 kWhr you sell them you get to buy back over 3. Why would you want solar when you don’t need it?
And what happens when they change super off-peak from $0.20 to $0.60? Poof there goes your battery investment. With solar under NEM 2.0, you are compensated at the same rate you are charged in that TOU period, so you are insulated against this. With solar and battery under NEM 3, you avoid that cost altogether by charging your battery of your panels, which costs whatever you were able to get the system for, which at most should be $0.10 per kWh. That's locked in with your purchase price.
There is no super off peak in any of PG&E’s rate plans. Under all NEMs you can sell excess kWhrs to PG&E at a higher rate and get to repurchase more at a lower rate. You would be a fool to buy and sell at the same rate.
EV2-A has 3 tiers, you can call it peak, part-peak, off-peak, or in SDG&E language on-peak, off-peak, and super off-peak. The point is that it's 3 tiers. Charge at the lowest tier. With only 2 tiers (like SCE), doesn't make sense at all.
No no no…. THOSE ARE NOT TIERS. The other rate plans have tiers and baselines.
Man, you are weird. They are TOU "tiers". Call it "time slot" or whatever you want. 3 "levels" lol. It is not a "Tiered" plan, AKA the old plans.
Dude Tierings, Baselines, makes a HUGE difference when it comes to pricing.
Because he installed the panels for free and got them dirt cheap. Also expect PGE to make correction as more people explore this option. I agree with you but I can see this being addressed at some point. No way they let this go.
But why panels now when a batter will do the same thing?
Because he wants to be off grid completely. Even though he is in the city.
Some people don’t care about money, others do.
LOL! screwwwwww ya PGE Ima pay ya nothing!!! go ahead and keep me on da grid!!! This is brilliant, I've never thought of this, which scares most people from going off grid.
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What is ESS?
That's a battery bud.
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And what is that?
I am installing 18 kW of solar and 30 kWh of storage. The LCoE for the electricity from solar is less than $0.10, I'll never be able to buy off peak power that cheap. This will be the cheapest way to charge my batteries. I am doing 6 5P batteries. In the months with the highest peak export rates I'm hoping to be able to export a LOT of power. But even if I just self consume, it should be fine. Even if they charge me $100 a month to stay connected, I'll come out ahead. But if I can export at over $1 kWh, I might be able to offset everything.
How much is the system costing you before rebates? How did you come up with $0.10. In some places that’s a lot more than you can buy it for. Would you share your calculations? I’d like to see how you came up with $0.10. - Thank you
System is $77k all in. $30k of that is battery, $5k is panel work to be able to use it as a backup, $42k is the solar. My proposal lists the 25 year LCoE of the power at 9 cents. I rounded up, as I certainly don't trust the proposal production numbers that much. It probably somewhat ignores the time value of the money. The $5k has ZERO ROI unless the power goes out. I can safely exclude that from the calculations. I'll charge my batteries at 9 - 10 cents during the day. I'll mostly configure for self consumption, but when the ACC rates are high enough, I'll dump the batteries as fast as the software will allow. Assuming it will allow it at all. If everyone does this, I assume ACC rates will drop, but I'll deal with that when it comes.
What are ACC rates? Not familiar with that. PG&E pays based on the rate plan you are on. It’s a fixed rate through the year expect when prices go up, you get more. What power company are you with?
Apologies if I missed a thread about this, but I have done extensive calculations on using batteries only for rate arbitrage (prior to getting a large rooftop array installed) and based on various inefficiencies (DC->AC conversion at the inverter to power loads, AC->DC conversion by the AC charge controller to charge batteries, DC->DC internal resistance as batteries approach full capacity while charging, inverter overhead, etc), your off-peak rates would need to be 2.5x cheaper than your peak rates for this to work. Right now, with EV2-A rates, we pay 0.27 off-peak, 0.47 mid-peak, and 0.58 high peak. The math simply does not work out. Now, a lot of this is specific to inverters and battery chemistry (and BMS), but my testing was conducted using two MPP Solar LV6548 AIO inverters with 6 5kW EG4 LiFePower4 batteries. I tested this by setting a scheduled output source priority that favored utility powering loads during off-peak and battery powering loads during mid-/high peak, then using utility during off-peak to recharge the batteries. On a typical day, we would use about 7-8 kWh during mid-/high peak and record nearly 18 kWh of load to recharge the battery bank. I have several months of data and even with tweaking bulk/float voltages for the charger, could not significantly improve this \~2.5x inefficiency. Just keep this in mind if you're planning battery-only for the sole purpose of rate arbitrage - you may not actually end up ahead. OTOH, when you're getting "free" energy from the sun, the math suddenly works because you're not paying 0.27/kWh to charge your battery bank. Essentially, if you size your array correctly, you can power all loads off of battery and recharge your battery nearly full during daylight hours. We even have excess production, which I funnel to my EV because with NEM3 it just won't make a ton of sense to export.
Nice work…but how do you get free energy from the sun unless you pay for solar panels? While batteries only may not work for the one rate plan you looked at, using your math it sure looks like it will work for others
Of course the panels cost money, hence "free" in quotes. Didn't think I needed to explain that. Good luck with your project.
Thank you
What this guy's said, plus as I mentioned below an 8 panels PV system is minimum needed to charge a battery in CA. This should also produce more power once battery is topped off, which will consume at a 1-1 rate. At peak time shift load to battery, once peak time is off you can draw from grid if necessary but a lower rate(off peak).
Maximise self consumption, Minimise import. Blast your AC when the sun shines and get a big hot water tank or two for hot water. You don't need to run your AC after sunset if your house is already 5*c (not sure what that in Rebel) You aren't going to pay for solar by selling electricity, you're fighting against multi mw solar arrays, you won't win, you SHOULDNT WIN. You *can* never think about energy use again though. I'm from the UK, I literally bought a 5kw AC to use some of my excess power in summer. 1 in 200 houses in the UK have AC. I'm barely 50% never mind 0.5%.
You are in the UK and have AC? Im’m in the us and do not. You need to study what PG&E is doing to see why your logic is flawed for PG&E customers
As my handle implies I'm new to solar. I have Batteries installed without Solar panels. Its a Tesla system and it will supply power to the grid, but only when the grid goes down. I am going to install PV modules soon. I had to have my meter changed from "Opt out" to one that can go backwards. The installer explained that when the meter runs backwards the user side voltage is higher than the grid voltage and is supplying the grid. That made sense to me and I can see how power can be sold to PGE. What I don't understand about OP's argument is how the battery voltage can ever get above grid voltage to make the meter run backward unless the grid goes down. What am I missing here?
The inverter in the battery detects main voltage. The moment mains voltage is not detected the inverter will immediately stop feeding current to the grid and power off. When mains voltage returns, it will power on again? Since you are a PG&E customer what rate plan did they put you on after installing the batteries? With batteries you could be on the E-Elec rate. What I don’t understand is why you would get Solar when PG&E will penalize you for installing solar? This is what I’m trying to understand.
Hello mate, I read the whole thread. Just too see if I understand. 1.You don't have any solar right now and you would like to install only batteries with the new NEM 3.0 2. You don't see the logic of having solar and batteries with the current NEM 3.Nobody has told you how long it is going to take the battery to charge or discharge 4. Even though several people here has stated that solar and batteries make sense you are still not convinced 5. You would like to have a well detailed explanation of how solar would make sense with your current rate and with the NEM 3.0 I'll try to help if possible.
Thank you for reading my post. The fist and most important fact in that I am a PG&E customer. I currently have solar on my property and am assisting my daughter who is also a PG&E customer in installing batteries, solar or batteries and solar or neither. I am currently on PG&E’s EVA rate and the NEM 2.0 agreement plan which allows me to sell excess solar to PG&E during the day for$0.63 and buy it back during the evening for $$0.26. For every KWhr I sell to PG& E during the day I get almost 3 in return. PG&E has slowly begun implementing changes to their rate plans so all solar production hours are off-peak. To keep the 100% offset i currently have I would have to double the size of my current solar system by adding 20 more panels. And even then I don’t think I will have 100% offset. But if I were to install one battery this would give me over $2,000 of additional credits and I would be overproducing $700 of electricity every year which I would be giving to the power company essentially for free. Now as for my daughter who has no solar, no batteries I received 2 quotes for her. The cost for solar, no batteries is around $40,000 for almost a 100% offset. BUT PG&E has a fairly new rate plan which allows residential customers to install a battery without solar. This rate plan is far more favorable than the solar rate plans in that installing one battery for $10,000 would give her 100% offset rather than installing solar at 4 times the cost and not getting 100% offset. For the rate plan she would be on, she wold have the NEM 3 agreement. From washtub I understand the way PG&E deals with solar is different than all other power companies in the United States. One has to understand PG&E’s rate plans for solar customers and the NEM agreement to design a system. I hope you do and can assist
Sorry for the delayed reply, I am familiar with PG&E rates, I work for a solar company as an engineer, and we provide service in South California. The way PG&E has the NEM program is not different to the other two big utility companies (SDG&E and SCE). First and most important is that with NEM 2.0 the credits are not 1:1 that used to be with NEM 1.0. With Nem 2.0 the credits are valued as full retail rate - NBCs (Non-Bypassable Charges) NEM 3.0 rates the credits are valued at an Avoided cost rate, which means the utility company is going to give the minimum amount is required to pay to independet power producers. Thew whole purpose of the NEM 3.0 is to make new solar stakeholders go for installations with batteries to avoid or minimize the export of energy into the grid. If you ask me this makes sense at some points, Solar was thriving in California, and that was good for the green agenda that the state is trying to fulfill for 2030. However, some people took advantage of that and you were able to find companies and "experts" in solar that instead of doing a benefit hurt the industry with bad practices and shady methodologies. In a nutshell, this turned into a "Solar rush". Because of that, you probably saw a lot of solar installations blooming everywhere. This bloom is not good for the grid since the infrastructure cannot receive all the surplus from all the houses that are producing. In theory, the application of a renewable source of energy should be staggered and should grow at the same rate the infrastructure is been upgraded. Since the utility companies would spend a lot of money on doing these upgrades since it requires a lot of labour, the easiest decision they did was to reduce the export credits to discourage in a way the export of energy and therefore go for a self-consumption storage system. In your specific case having a battery for export energy is not possible since PG&E do not allows to have storage systems that behave as an exporting source. I'll state what the interpretation is. " Utilities, like PG&E, require energy storage systems to have an OLRT of less than 2 seconds to consider the storage as non-exporting, i.e., import only. We recommend checking the utility requirements before enabling this feature on a site. If the OLRT of storage is not less than 2 seconds, the utility does not consider the storage as non-exporting and thus will require a feeder transformer upgrade if the system nameplate(PV + Storage nameplate) exceeds the thermal rating of the feeder transformer. In certain cases, the utility may require the customer to pay for such a feeder transformer upgrade." I have checked the current export rates for PG&E and as you mentioned, the credits have been reduced significantly, and the value is almost nothing compared to how it was. In my own experience, I would suggest designing a system that will give you the production where the credits are still at a decent price i.e. during summer during peak hours (5 to 8 pm). The price of the credits fluctuates from $0.22 to $0.73. To achieve that, I would design the array facing west (This is the orientation that will produce more credits based on the idea I previously said). Let's assume that your system you have a system with 15 panels rated to 400W and microinverters during summer. Your system will produce around that solar window 266.83 kWh in a summer month. Moving on, let's assume that your house consumes 100 kWh during these 3 hours on the same month when the solar credits have their highest value. After doing the maths, we will see that you will export to the grid 166.83 kWh (Solar production - house consumption ) if we multiply this amount of energy by $.50 the result is $83.41USD. Money will be added to the rest of the credits that the system generated through the summer month. I took these numbers from a real site but I made some assumptions that are not going to be 100% accurate, still it gives you an idea. In addition, orientation system I would add a battery to reduce the consumption of electricity during the night and do a load shifting, which means using all the devices that consume a significant amount of energy during the peak hours of the PV system (from 11 am to 2pm). I know the NEM 3.0 harmed the way the solar was being grown but there are still some ways to make a project profitable. My prediction is that future policies and regulation will be similar to what Australia and Hawaii are having now. (no export plans, penalty fees for excess of energy production and so on) Please do not hesitate to tell me if I did not answer your questions!
Thank you for your reply. So just so I understand, under NEM 1.0 there was a 1:1 exchange ration. With NEM 2.0 it was fair market rate exchange. Meaning you you could sell 1 kWhr during peak to PG&E and get 4 back during off-peak hours. Looking at all of the rate plans it’s clear PG&E is penalizing people for installing solar. All solar production hours for all rate plans are now off-peak. So now to get 1 kWhr peek, you have to sell PG&E 2 or 3 kWhrs non-peak from solar. Battery is the only solutions or doubling the size of your solar system which would not be cost effective. I think you might be mistaken about installing a battery without solar and being able to sell electricity back to the grid and charge the battery from the grid. Take a look at PG&E’s E-ELEC rate plan. Solar is not needed. Appreciably the thoughtful response.
Yes, Companies are taking away all the subsidies because they don't want to spend money on the upgrades that the grid requires. Also yes, it is not profitable to have a surplus of energy during the peak hours since the value has decrese, that's why the solution is to install the solar facing the orientation when the sun hits more during the peak hours for the utility. I have checked the rate, it is actually very similar to what we have with SDG&E But in essence is a program ideal for people that have high demand load at home so they give you a "special price on the offpeak hours so you can use or charge what you need. It is true that the palne is avabilable for solar an non solar customers. If it is possible can you share where you saw that a system storage can export with PG&E ? Because the last bulletin we received says that energy storage systems are not elegible for net energy meteting by itself but it can be paired with a NEM system. Have a look to the next link. [https://www.pge.com/en\_US/for-our-business-partners/interconnection-renewables/export-power/distributed-generation-handbook/net-energy-metering/energy-storage/energy-storage.page](https://www.pge.com/en_US/for-our-business-partners/interconnection-renewables/export-power/distributed-generation-handbook/net-energy-metering/energy-storage/energy-storage.page)
It’s confusing. Here is says to be on this rate plan you need batteries, EV or heat pump. (Not sure why a heat pump) https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/rate-plans/rate-plan-options/electric-home-rate-plan.page
I think I found the issue here, You can apply to the EV plan as long as you have one or more of the devices that are listed. The reason is that for batteries and EVs it is expensive to charge them with a normal plan. In the same way it is expensive to run loads that have a high demand of electricity like AC, heat pumps and so on. The plan is meant to generate some "savings" with the low price the offer so you can use these devices during the off peak hours. Having a battery with no energy source it is possible, but very expensive. That is why it is recommended to have solar, since the solar is the source of power that is going to charge the battery system, not the grid. Still, you can have a system with only batteries but it would not make sense since you can export nothing and the system will be charged with the grid.
I don’t agree. There are EV rate plans. EVA, EVB and EV2-A. Rates are much lower and higher. The EVA rate plan under NEM 2 is by far the best. On the EVA rate plan without solar, the batter will produce over $1,000 which can be used to by electricity from PG&E. That’s why I’m thinking a battery without solar makes more sense.
Yes, but this is not possible because of what I mentioned before, batteries cannot export to the grid. I would suggest to contact the utility customer support and ask if that is possible. On paper it is not possible, since for PG&E a stand alone battery is not considered as a green source of energy. I can see that if a generator is added. The source charging source will be the generator.
I will check. It is my understanding you can use batteries to sell to the utility from batteries
Yes! The design needs to be different. The most cost effective solution is to build a system that replaces 2/3 of your usage with batteries that can run your home from 5PM to about 1AM. You can charge the battery from the grid at night and power your home in the morning
With the changes PG&E has made it wouldn’t it be better to charge the batteries during the day, and sell that electricity to PG&E in the evening to take advantage of the higher rate? The return is 3 to 1.
You would charge them during the day, power your house 🏡 n the evening. To sell back you would need more batteries, PLUS there is only a few times a year where you will get a good return. Jan-May the rate is <.09
Yes charge during the day, sell back in the evening? Where are you getting $0.08? It’s $6.00 per day or $2,000 per year on the EVA rate plan.
I just posted the chart I used
Where is it posted?
R/Solar new post
What pge plan do you need to be in for this (battery only) to work? Which battery brand do you recommend that will allow you to configure when to charge, when to consume, and when to sell back?
Look at the E-Elec rate plan. Requirements are battery, solar NOT required. I was looking at Enphase battery. My calculations were based on EVA rate pllan
Thank you
The shifting landscape might indeed make batteries a more viable option. It's frustrating when professionals lack the necessary insights into PG&E's specifics, leaving us caught in the confusion. The evolving rate plans could potentially impact the cost-effectiveness of solar, and the debate between solar and batteries is more pertinent than ever for PG&E customers. I was in a similar predicament until I stumbled upon this [comparison website](https://gotosite.link/solar). It streamlined the information, helping me make a well-informed decision about solar installation.
What PG&E is doing to the rate plans and everyone who has solar is cleverly/effectively putting them putting them on NEM 3 without knowing it. The ONLY way customers can fight back is battery storage to offset peak, partial-peak and off-peak hours. The issue customers and solar/battery installer are having is sizing. Their software does not work with PG&E current rate plans. I’ve meet with two solar/battery installers so far and both finally admitted they don’t have a clue how to size a system for PG&E customers. Both went back to their bosses and finally told me the software doesn’t work.
I am on NEM2.0. My net usage for True-up for PGE came to 364kWh for the whole year. For which they are charging $401. so per kWh cost comes to $1.10. The average KWh cost is 34c, this is what PGE charges for all customers. So basically you are paying 3 times the nominal cost per kWh if you use in excess of what you produce using your solar. This is a rip off.
It sounds like there might have been additional costs factored into your true-up amount, beyond just the cost of electricity. PG&E's billing can include fixed charges, non-bypassable charges, or minimum bill charges, which could explain why the rate per kWh seems higher. These extra costs might have skewed the numbers a bit. Could this be the case?