sunwarriors
Active Member
The problem with batteries and VPP in CA so far is that it's only during limited time events I think. We'll know how much people are actually paid in March, but I think the payment is only the difference from what is normally discharged during the last 7 days.
So if a consumer normally uses 8kWh of their PW from 4-9pm during a non-event, and decides to export 100%, they would only get paid on the 5kWh rather than all 13kWhs (assuming no reserve). Someone correct me if I'm wrong here. Also, after you drain your batteries to reserve, you'll be back to pulling from the grid during the event paying the highest rates which eats into some of the credits.
From reading a lot of posts here and reddit, a lot of folks have trouble enough getting any batteries and can't make ROI work. Most here didn't do energy storage for any ROI and VPP helps bring that closer, but I have doubts PG&E would allow folks to export everything every night even when there is not a power demand event.
Those numbers in the above post are also in MWhs. Outside of 1 or 2 hours of super high rates, the utility is better buying it off the spot market since it's mostly all lower than $3000/MWh so they are probably not going to use VPP I don't think unless it's really bad.
So if a consumer normally uses 8kWh of their PW from 4-9pm during a non-event, and decides to export 100%, they would only get paid on the 5kWh rather than all 13kWhs (assuming no reserve). Someone correct me if I'm wrong here. Also, after you drain your batteries to reserve, you'll be back to pulling from the grid during the event paying the highest rates which eats into some of the credits.
From reading a lot of posts here and reddit, a lot of folks have trouble enough getting any batteries and can't make ROI work. Most here didn't do energy storage for any ROI and VPP helps bring that closer, but I have doubts PG&E would allow folks to export everything every night even when there is not a power demand event.
Those numbers in the above post are also in MWhs. Outside of 1 or 2 hours of super high rates, the utility is better buying it off the spot market since it's mostly all lower than $3000/MWh so they are probably not going to use VPP I don't think unless it's really bad.