• Have you tried out dark mode?! Scroll to the bottom of any page to find a sun or moon icon to turn dark mode on or off!

diy solar

diy solar

Got switched to NEM3, so will be exporting 15kWh storage from 4p-9p one month

H

Thread 'Moss Landing plant fire'

Even the professionals struggle with battery fires.

It is unclear if it is isolated to one of the smaller modules on site, or larger.

It is definitely an intense fire.

One of the largest Li battery storage sites around.

apnews.com

Smoke from fire at California lithium battery plant raises concerns about air quality

A fire at the world’s largest battery storage plant in Northern California is smoldering after sending plumes of toxic smoke into the atmosphere.
apnews.com apnews.com

  • Like

This is the fire that I am referring to.

Thanks for the update on what plans are available on NEM 3.
 
HarryN said:
This is the fire that I am referring to.
Click to expand...
Do they store batteries or are the a battery energy storage site because there's a big difference? I was referring to BESS( Battery Energy Storage Systems) and how failures in battery management systems are good for the utilities because local governments will pass ordinances preventing BESS installations near customers. BESS installations away from customers require large transmission lines and around here, transmission is about 3x generation costs from the local IOU.
 
thedmpd said:
Sorry Doug, I am not being clear enough. The 4-9 windows is when SCE charges us the most expensive rate HOWEVER, it is also when they pay the least amount back to us on sell-back. Bad idea to sell back during that window. Here's the rate for this summer during PEAK TOU:

6/25/2025 16:00:00 6/25/2025 16:59:59 0.01806 export $/kWh
6/25/2025 17:00:00 6/25/2025 17:59:59 0.01788 export $/kWh
6/25/2025 18:00:00 6/25/2025 18:59:59 0.01754 export $/kWh
6/25/2025 19:00:00 6/25/2025 19:59:59 0.01645 export $/kWh
6/25/2025 20:00:00 6/25/2025 20:59:59 0.01433 export $/kWh
6/25/2025 21:00:00 6/25/2025 21:59:59 0.01382 export $/kWh

Compare that to same day solar production hours:

6/25/2025 7:00:00 6/25/2025 7:59:59 0.0834 export $/kWh
6/25/2025 8:00:00 6/25/2025 8:59:59 0.08554 export $/kWh
6/25/2025 9:00:00 6/25/2025 9:59:59 0.08813 export $/kWh
6/25/2025 10:00:00 6/25/2025 10:59:59 0.09367 export $/kWh
6/25/2025 11:00:00 6/25/2025 11:59:59 0.08458 export $/kWh
6/25/2025 12:00:00 6/25/2025 12:59:59 0.08127 export $/kWh
6/25/2025 13:00:00 6/25/2025 13:59:59 0.06863 export $/kWh
6/25/2025 14:00:00 6/25/2025 14:59:59 0.03869 export $/kWh
6/25/2025 15:00:00 6/25/2025 15:59:59 0.01991 export $/kWh


You're better banking and selling during the midnight/early AM hours for max Revenue:
6/25/2025 2:00:00 6/25/2025 2:59:59 0.12559 export $/kWh TOU
6/25/2025 3:00:00 6/25/2025 3:59:59 0.10252 export $/kWh TOU

edit: I hate tables...
Click to expand...
Thanks again for sticking with it and making sure I understood the insanity of the governing bodies allowing the IOUs to not only pay very little to rooftop solar generators but to not pay the most during high energy usage and instead shift rooftop solar generator max rates to super low use periods. I would not have seen the lunacy and the pitance they are paying us for our stored energy. Here on SoCA they just shifted from a 0.09xx max rate(at 1am) to 0.07xx(at 1am). The window of higher rates was from 0-7a but is now from 1-4a.
I could get more for my money by running an extension cord out to the parkway and sharing with EV owning neighbors via a Venmo QRcode donation box.
 
Just saw this article. Basically people on NEM1 or NEM2 shall be switched to NEM3 before the 20 years are up.

The article says that this means a 80% cut in the payment for export. In my opinion it's rather 99% unless you talk about exporting after sunset (higher rate).

pv-magazine-usa.com

California proposes break to rooftop solar contracts, raising average bills $63

Over one million California homes that invested in rooftop solar may have their net metering contracts rescinded under the proposed bill AB 942.
pv-magazine-usa.com pv-magazine-usa.com
 
What I saw in Solar Billing Plan documents under PG&E is they pay a pittance most hours and months of the year, then an average of $3/kWh credit (toward Generation not Distribution) between 6:00 PM and 7:00 PM in September. Maybe a moderate amount that hour of August or was it October.

That one hour per day in September could cover most of your consumption the rest of the year.
But that only applies toward Generation; you still have to pay PG&E the bigger half of the peak retail price (distribution) when you use that credit later.
 
NotTooBright said:
This is what I've seen for NEM3 with PG&E
View attachment 293195
Click to expand...
IIRC the best I've seen for 2025 in SoCA is around 90 cents/kWh and the only way to make it pan out is to generate more than $100 worth so that a check is paid out instead of requiring import+distribution. And those 90 cent periods are few and far between so unless you have a large system contract and big batteries so you can dump many kWh in short periods it's still a bad play to sell back to the grid.
 
I'm sad the $3.50 backfeed credit is gone, but love the idea of being paid $0.90 in cash.
Is that really a thing?
 
Hedges said:
I'm sad the $3.50 backfeed credit is gone, but love the idea of being paid $0.90 in cash.
Is that really a thing?
Click to expand...
I don't know where you got $0.90 in cash since I said $100+ export would result in being paid out instead of leaving credit on the books.
 
$0.90/kWh. Much more than my cost.
So long as I exported net of 110kWh, that would exceed $100.
I can make almost that much in a day, no sweat exporting 3.5kWh/day from even a small battery.
$0.79, $0.90, $0.71 for 3 hours of August. At 10kW, could export 30 kWh/day for $24/day, $7200 in one month. I'll buy that!
(but PG&E may not like paying it.)
Where does it say pay surplus in cash? I've only ever seen credits for usage under my old retail net metering, and payout for excess kWh at about $0.02
 
Hedges said:
$0.90/kWh. Much more than my cost.
So long as I exported net of 110kWh, that would exceed $100.
I can make almost that much in a day, no sweat exporting 3.5kWh/day from even a small battery.
$0.79, $0.90, $0.71 for 3 hours of August. At 10kW, could export 30 kWh/day for $24/day, $7200 in one month. I'll buy that!
(but PG&E may not like paying it.)
Where does it say pay surplus in cash? I've only ever seen credits for usage under my old retail net metering, and payout for excess kWh at about $0.02
Click to expand...
I think you're reading too much into this. When I said "IIRC the best I've seen for 2025 in SoCA is around 90 cents/kWh.." it didn't mean every hour was paying back at $0.90 / kWh, it was to mean of the hours in the rate schedule for export there are some up as high as around $0.90 / kWh.
And currently you either have to write code to parse the rate schedule and control your inverter export accordingly or each day watch what the rate is and then manually update the export timer in the inverter firmware to take advantage of those particular hours of 'higher' export rates.

I'm not on PG&E in SoCA.
 
Assuming that schedule applied to the entire year, and wasn't some snapshot of dynamic predicted pricing, I took it to mean that during August 2025, between 8:00 PM and 9:00 PM, backfeed it credited $0.90/kWh (oh, weekdays only not weekends, so about 20 days.) No code, just a programmable timer.

Does that ever get paid out in cash?? Doubt it.

Charge a battery during the day. With a 10kW inverter drawing rom battery, export 10kWh on about 20 weekdays of the month, 200 kWh credited $0.90 each is $180. The 3 hours averaged $0.80 credit, $24/day and $480/year. (My math previously had a 10x error.)

Not as exiting as $thousands before I corrected error. I could export 60kW or a bit more in 3 hours with my inverters, get about $1000 credit. Trouble is, to use $1000 in generation credits other times of the year I'll have to pay about $2000 cash for "distribution".
 
Hedges said:
Assuming that schedule applied to the entire year, and wasn't some snapshot of dynamic predicted pricing, I took it to mean that during August 2025, between 8:00 PM and 9:00 PM, backfeed it credited $0.90/kWh (oh, weekdays only not weekends, so about 20 days.) No code, just a programmable timer.

Does that ever get paid out in cash?? Doubt it.

Charge a battery during the day. With a 10kW inverter drawing rom battery, export 10kWh on about 20 weekdays of the month, 200 kWh credited $0.90 each is $180. The 3 hours averaged $0.80 credit, $24/day and $480/year. (My math previously had a 10x error.)

Not as exiting as $thousands before I corrected error. I could export 60kW or a bit more in 3 hours with my inverters, get about $1000 credit. Trouble is, to use $1000 in generation credits other times of the year I'll have to pay about $2000 cash for "distribution".
Click to expand...
PG&E seems to be different from our IOU in that PG&E seem to provide more consistent monthly rate schedule. While I do notice there are some repeating high export rates hours in August 2025, I still see variations of rates from day to day. There might be some consistency for the few high-rate days such that exporting the max allowable power over the month isn't insignificant like doing the same at $0.05 / kWh is then it would mean, with our EG4/LuxPower inverter we'd have to switch on and off grid mode to see those high values. You see, our IOU takes the median value of all the rate hours in the month which saw export. Because our inverter 'leaks' up to 200W every hour, those few hours of high export rates get washed down far lower. For example, the median rate for the month of August is $0.073 / kWh even though there are a few hours some days with rates over $0.60 / kWh. But I'm told if our accumulating credit exceeds $100 then we would get a check for that amount.
Aug and Sept are the only 2 months with high($0.70-$0.90) max hourly rates for an hour or two most days.

1745097946893.png
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

diy solar

diy solar
Back
Top