I am really impressed at how California has scaled up its use of batteries. I remember 5-6 years ago coding on Electricity Maps and seeing almost no storage (link: https://app.electricitymaps.com/zone/US-CAL-CISO)
Financially it's kind of a no brainer at this point. Myself and a bunch of family members are customers of SDGE and the lowest price anyone is paying is now $0.50/kWh and the highest is $0.91/kWh.
The household paying the latter just installed 15kW of solar panels and a battery bank to cut their costs to the $16/mo hookup fee and it's not even the height of summer yet. It's almost to the point where their backup propane generator is cheaper to run than pay for utility power! The solar/battery installation will pay for itself in under five years assuming no price increases (hah!).
Everyone is building it at every level of the producer/consumer curve.
Maybe it's that I'm not in as sunny an area, but all of the (battery + panels) numbers I've seen tell me I'll see a break-even in 15 years, vs in ~5 if I just have panels.
They did the installation themselves so the only labor they paid for was roofers to reshingle the roof first. I think that significantly changes the calculus.
There was a US tax program last year that cut 30% of costs off of renewable energy projects. I took advantage of it - it brought the project from "will never pay for itself" to "pays for itself in ~3-5 years" due to the way the financing worked out with the tax credit.
I'm in a very sunny area and my break-even based on last estimate was 16 years, because the local electric monopoly charges a huge monthly fee from solar owners even if you consume nothing.
I'd probably be better off disconnecting from the grid fully, but that's riskier in a climate that still has serious winters and would need more planning than I have spare cycles for, and would have more up-front costs.
Ca state destroyed its energy companies by creating cartels through PGE etc. PGE is unreliable, expensive and has such poor quality of service. (Not to mention immense harm they bring to environment by regularly causing forest fires). It is a poorly managed company that works only because of its collusion with Ca state.
I have installed 21 solar panels and I have a propane powered generator. My intention is to eventually move to batteries as well so I can be as independent of PgE as possible.
Does not matter because all of them are essentially run by California's Public Utilities Commission. Everything that these companies can do differently is ultimately decided by corrupt and incompetent people in PUC. All this leads to terrible decisions.
In a world where companies have to keep consumers happy we get better and better products each year. You want meat without killing animals ? You get that too.
In a world where companies have to only make government employees happy you get outcomes that make government employees happy and consumers being treated as shit.
The household paying the latter just installed 15kW of solar panels and a battery bank to cut their costs to the $16/mo hookup fee and it's not even the height of summer yet. It's almost to the point where their backup propane generator is cheaper to run than pay for utility power! The solar/battery installation will pay for itself in under five years assuming no price increases (hah!).
Everyone is building it at every level of the producer/consumer curve.