I would love to see an ROI on batteries that anyone would invest in, I sure have never seen one.
And since most folks move in like 7 years, and IMO, very little if any value of solar or batteries on a sale, ....
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CPUC NEM 3.0 discussion
- Thread starter jjrandorin
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And since most folks move in like 7 years, and IMO, very little if any value of solar or batteries on a sale, ....
Was talking to a person who commented on my 7 powerwalls. I told him if I were to start over today, NO WAY would I buy batteries. There is 100K worth of them sitting there basically doing nothing. I have yet to have a power outage since I got them. And my generator is not used either.
I told him I would design and wait for a V2h/V2G setup with a new EV! At least this way I can use the 100K investment, rather than it sitting on the side of my house doing nothing, IMO.
Now for the folks that say wait, you can offset electricity costs, I offer my opinion. (This would be before NEM3, but ... ) I would load up with solar, like I have. I use PGE as my battery under NEM2. And if I get a power outage, which I hardly ever do, I can turn my generator on for a few hours a day, like I have done in the past.
Since I will never have all EV's, I have no need to use or charge an EV if I do get a power outage, I just drive my ICE cars, which the EV powers the house.
Oh well, my money is gone, but at least I try to help others on the options coming real fast.
I told him I would design and wait for a V2h/V2G setup with a new EV! At least this way I can use the 100K investment, rather than it sitting on the side of my house doing nothing, IMO.
Now for the folks that say wait, you can offset electricity costs, I offer my opinion. (This would be before NEM3, but ... ) I would load up with solar, like I have. I use PGE as my battery under NEM2. And if I get a power outage, which I hardly ever do, I can turn my generator on for a few hours a day, like I have done in the past.
Since I will never have all EV's, I have no need to use or charge an EV if I do get a power outage, I just drive my ICE cars, which the EV powers the house.
Oh well, my money is gone, but at least I try to help others on the options coming real fast.
If you were starting again today, you wouldn't have NEM2 so the grid wouldn't pay you much for the electricity, which pushes the economics towards PV+battery.
However, the USA has much more expensive PV and batteries than in better markets so the economics aren't necessarily as obvious as elsewhere.
However, the USA has much more expensive PV and batteries than in better markets so the economics aren't necessarily as obvious as elsewhere.
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I am still not convinced. With that said, under NEM3, would have just stopped with my generator. I would get an EV that I could get V2H. No solar or batteries. Technology changes, and one has to adapt to it.
Sorta hard to know what's best considering most everyone lives in a different area with different power rates. We're at $0.89/kWh in San Diego and as a counter argument, if I had to do it all over again, I'd definitely get the batteries even though I've also never had a power outage since. Of course, I only have 2. I'm also waiting for V2H where an EV would give someone more flexibility on covering a very long non-sunny outage scenario.
People need to just factor in their cost of $$ (what were they planning to do with that $$ sitting in a bank/investment account), if they can afford it, the peace of mind of any disaster and flexibility of what the IOUs do to change the game (which is non-stop).
Again, it's easy to say after the fact it's a waste of $$, but there are places like this where they had 40 power outages in 4 months:
www.nbcbayarea.com
With freak weather, folks doing VPP (not me), if someone can afford it, I still vote with my $$ (which I did and I'm prob one of the poor folks here) to get batteries. With NEM3.0, solar is not worth it already. We get 1 : 0.13 metering in San Diego so it's even worst than the 1 : 0.25.
Or better yet, someone can just live in the dark, never use power, no A/C and that'll show the utilities!
People need to just factor in their cost of $$ (what were they planning to do with that $$ sitting in a bank/investment account), if they can afford it, the peace of mind of any disaster and flexibility of what the IOUs do to change the game (which is non-stop).
Again, it's easy to say after the fact it's a waste of $$, but there are places like this where they had 40 power outages in 4 months:
Danville community demands to know what's leaving them in the dark so often
The Danville City Council called a PG&E executive on the carpet Tuesday evening demanding to know what’s leaving the community in the dark so often and what exactly they’re going to do about it.
www.nbcbayarea.com
With freak weather, folks doing VPP (not me), if someone can afford it, I still vote with my $$ (which I did and I'm prob one of the poor folks here) to get batteries. With NEM3.0, solar is not worth it already. We get 1 : 0.13 metering in San Diego so it's even worst than the 1 : 0.25.
Or better yet, someone can just live in the dark, never use power, no A/C and that'll show the utilities!
You don’t at least rate arbitrage? Charge the batteries from grid overnight and then use that as the main source of electricity during the day (and not the grid)? Is that not possible with Tesla PW and PG&E?
Right, I understand NEM3. Battteries can improve the rate arbitrage, but with the significant costs there essentially will be no ROI under NEM3 by purchasing Solar + Battery.
What I am asking about is that a Solar company is advertising $.20/kWh with no upfront costs (PG&E territory). If that is true, I would think leasing would be the way to go under NEM3. Even if the NEM3 credits are insignificant, $.20/kWh is lower than any PG&E rate
Never. I have so much extra solar that my credit is huge so I need to more hassles
Why isn't it fair to have a 100 kWh EV with bidirectional charging that you charge during the day for free with your solar panels? Then you can sell the electricity to your neighbors at 7PM. Most EVs with have bidirectional charging in a couple of years. In order to sell your electricity to your neighbors, each customer should pay a small fee to maintain the local micro grid to support the infrastructure.
bradtem
Robocar consultant
This depends. If you have a million mile battery, go ahead and sell power to others from your car. Otherwise, each kWh you put in and out of your battery degrades it and uses up its life. It's an expensive battery, though it can make financial sense to use it up to feed the grid when prices are high. But you are also reducing the useful life of your whole car, as once your battery is down 20-30%, you find the car less useful.
This selling back from a battery is not something that will be allowed to happen I expect. I just would like to have batteries that can move
bradtem
Robocar consultant
Curious economics here. Car batteries have to be light, small, able to charge at 200kW and discharge at high power rates. They must never catch fire as you park them in your house and they must not degrade much or they kill your car's range. These are all things that home/grid batteries don't need or barely need. (You don't want them to catch fire, but grid batteries can be put in a place where it is not catostrophic if they do.)
All of this says they should not be the same battery. Yet strangely, they are today because the economies of scale in EVs have made lithium batteries much cheaper than others. That won't last forever. When you can get a home battery for 1/2 the price of a car battery, you won't want to use up your car battery to sell power to the grid, you will want to use up the home battery. Which is also always connected -- a car battery can't power your house if the car is elsewhere. Car batteries might have merit for grid emergency peaks, and during power blackouts -- short term, limited uses that can justify using the most expensive batteries to power your lights and air conditioner.
Without either (a) individualized use battery back up, or (b) utility level back up, individual solar generation in, say California, is basically over. Solar is now, today, at this moment, on a relatively bad solar day, at over 50% of California state wide demand.
I have seen it even higher, but the whole NEM 3 movement was because Utilities cannot simply survive in a situation where solar provides 100% of statewide energy until like 5:00 p.m. and then they have to turn on a bunch of plants. It doesn't matter how many names you call them, that's unworkable.
Its also unworkable, after you call them a name or two, for them to act as anyone's "battery" past a certain point, and given the economic unreality of having energy forced on them for free and then having to give credits at retail at night ........... well, we have all had our say on how that reality should be adjusted, but until the gang on this board is appointed as the CPUC, there will be no reform.
Can you imagine, your a utility and you got 40,000 mwh during the day and you have to provide it for "free" at night?
The point is that regardless of economics, battery back up is the only way that solar can sustainably work until utilities come up with utility level back up, which they are barely dabbling in.
I will say this before withdrawing again, the whole idea of computing return as some number of years is misleading. Simply treat the batteries as part of the system, like wiring (albeit an expensive part) and compute the cost of the system over 20 years, and come up with a cost per kwh. Even with batteries, that cost is less than paying the utility.
It used to be some much less, basically like one third the cost, that you could convert the calculation into years -- like say, 7 years (about one-third of 20).
But if its only 2/3 of the cost its now 13 years, or if its 3/4 the cost its now like 15 years.
But 3/4 the cost also means that a $400 per month bill is $300. That's still a reason do do solar and batteries, but you need batteries long term. The era of solar only is now over.
The industry will chug along like its not over, but its effectively over.
If one is staying in a house for 20 years, maybe. But since most move well before that, is this the best place to spend money.
I have a friend who put 50K into solar, thinking they would be their long time. A divorce then happened within a year, and when they sold, they basically got nothing for the solar.
That's a good point, I think its more of a flaw in house valuation, or may go to the fact that this expensive hardware is too difficult to transfer to another house.
Putting aside the mathematical ability of the average real estate agent, figuring out how valuable a solar/battery system is is relatively easy, I mean, its like the one feature on a house which actually makes money, other than renting out a room on Airbnb.
With how quickly technology changes, I would not pay anymore for any of it. My PW 2's are not old technology. My solar panels are not the latest. What I have going for me is PGE approval for 30kw, that NO one has. Even the 7 batteries might not be able to be coded today. But still, to assume ANY value, it nuts, IMO.
They put 50K into solar after or before tax incentives? Their net investment may be much lower.
I don't think the problem is unique to solar. Buyers tend to not know cost to construct an amenity, so they don't realize how much value has been added to a house. Both sellers and buyers often believe an old house is worth more than it actually is. A gut renovated house may be a better deal just because the seller put so much money into it that they'll never make back.
Don't know how much of this applies to California housing stock which is relatively new except for maybe SF proper. I'm talking about cities with older housing stock like NYC.
h20, I often envy your system, but I mean, the value is obvious, at least to me.
Without my system I would be paying $.23 to $.27 per kwh this year, and who knows how much more, for the minimum of 25,000 kwh I use per year, forever.
With the system, I am locked in at $.16 cents for the warranty period. The system shows no signs of not producing at least 25,000 kwh per year.
So at about a ten cent savings it gives me $2500 per year, which rises a bit over time. Plus back up. Plus the fact that I am not using peak power which is not clean. Admittedly the last point is perhaps a moral value not a monetary one.
Add to that the fact that by monitoring charging both my EVs run off the sun most of time time, barring occasional supercharging or whatever.
There is no other piece of my house or anything affixed to it which gives me $2500 per year.
Its not a lot of dough but I don't understand people who say it has no value.
Between the batteries and solar, it was about 200K so at 2500 per year savings? Now, since I am all electric and one EV now, maybe saying a lot more, but even at 10K per year, thats 20 years, and I will not be alive that long.
But it is fun never having to worry about any energy costs! A few months a year I draw zero, or basically, from PGE.
You really have thrown me off with the "what if I sell the house and have to give it away" point, but I always looked at it this way.
Say you have $50K. You can:
(1) put it in tax exempt 4% bonds and get $2K a year., or
(2) install a solar plus battery back up which produces electricity which you would otherwise have to pay $7k a year for, or more. That's a 14% tax free rate of return, and its a rate of return in the apples to apples sense.
The fact that there is another way of calculating it based on cost per kwh of a private system v. paying the utility is just that, another way of calculating it.
People have to compare it to what the utility charges because my example doesn't work if the system isn't cheaper than just paying for the electricity, but the system is cheaper. At least with battery back up it is.
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