[mercutio2]

How do you like your Enphase batteries? I was pondering buying them, already have Enphase solar.

I'm particularly interested in whether you're doing any load-shifting with them, and if so, how easy it is to do with the software. I'm paying $.90/kWh at summer peak, so while I'm still on net-metering, I'm somewhat interested in going ahead and fully arbitraging during peak.

[danans]

> How do you like your Enphase batteries?

I'm mostly happy with them. The batteries are pretty much set-and-forget, but I change the reserve level by season (90% in winter, 30% in summer). The system automatically decides how to do load shifting to optimize for your particular rate structure. I will say the monitoring software can be janky at times. It's gotten better, but sometimes it is very slow to connect to the system.

> I'm paying $.90/kWh at summer peak

Whoa, where is that? That's 2x more expensive than California or Hawaii. You must be on a wholesale rate plan with very low off-peak rates if you are considering arbitrage. It's also good that you waited until this year, because before the IRA, the residential battery tax credit was only available if you charged it with on-site renewables, not from the grid.

I don't do any grid arbitrage in the sense of buying low and selling back to the grid from my batteries when rates are high. That's not possible for homeowners in CA, is it in your area? However, several places in Southern California already have home-battery based virtual-power-plants that you can participate in, and I think it integrates with Enphase batteries. In those programs, the arbitrage is managed by a 3rd party company which then compensates the homeowner.

However, my evening loads during the peak rate hours do draw on my battery until it hits its reserve level, so what I do is more like peak-rate avoidance than arbitrage.

My batteries also don't charge from the grid, just from my PV array. With subsidized net-metering 2.0, the difference between peak and off peak for me is only $.07/kWh, so there's really not a ton of economic value there, maybe like $70-80/year at most.

[mercutio2]

I live in Berkeley. PG&E’s peak EV-A rate for generation plus distribution was $.92 this summer. It doubled in a year or two.

My off peak rate for charging the car went from net $.15/kWh to $.36 during the summer.

It’s news to me that load shifting (if you’ve got batteries and solar) isn’t allowed by the CPUC, that does take the wind out of my sails a bit. But the peak rates are so high that just zeroing out my peak consumption is still probably worth it.

Does the system come with a “disconnect from the grid during emergencies” shunt?

I’ve heard conflicting reports about the availability and legality of those systems.

[danans]

> I live in Berkeley. PG&E’s peak EV-A rate for generation plus distribution was $.92 this summer

I live in the same service area. The peak EV2A rate (including both generation and distribution) is currently $0.55/kWh, and the off-peak is $0.24/kWh.

https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/rate-plans/rate-plan-o...

Not sure where you are getting $0.92/kWh, but would be curious to learn.

> It’s news to me that load shifting (if you’ve got batteries and solar) isn’t allowed by the CPUC, that does take the wind out of my sails a bit. But the peak rates are so high that just zeroing out my peak consumption is still probably worth it.

Load shifting in the sense of shifting your load to different times to consume cleaner/cheaper electricity from the grid, is fine and even encouraged by the CPUC. There are all kinds of programs to encourage this. You can achieve this by simple behavioral changes, timed appliance runs, or by using battery storage.

What you can't do as an individual homeowner, AFAIK, is arbitrage power by buying low from the grid and selling back high to the grid later.

> Does the system come with a “disconnect from the grid during emergencies” shunt?

> I’ve heard conflicting reports about the availability and legality of those systems.

The only "emergency" that causes a disconnect is a power outage. That's no different than what solar inverters already do. The difference with the batteries is that when that happens, they form an isolated microgrid on your premises, thereby providing backup for that scenario.

What other sort of emergencies were you imagining? If you mean minimizing grid load during peak grid load events, then that's what the virtual peaker programs do, and those are completely legal, and active participants in the CAISO energy markets.

[mercutio2]

I just re-read by October PGE bill. My NEM distribution charges at peak were $.61/kWh.

My peak generation charges were a further $.31/kWh.

I don’t pay the NEM number until end of year, but I just paid it and it was another $500 of accumulated NEM charges.