I've had my 3 PWs about 18 months now so I've gone through an annual NEM cycle. Last summer, on Cost Saving, I set my Reserve to between 30% and 50% depending on the forecast. The higher reserve on extreme hit because I don't trust PG&E infrastructure in hot weather. I did a good amount of rate arbitrage with these settings, but not as much as others are doing with a lower reserve. I should add that I'm still on EV1-A so my Peak starts at 2pm.
So the arbitrage netted my a large swing in my annual NEM. Went from ~+$200 w/o PW (PWs were added to existing PV) to ~negative $950 even though I was still a net user not producer of kWh. Obviously, the negative NEM just goes away.
So this summer knowing I have a lot of NEM leeway, I decided to prioritize backup in case of unforeseen outage (again because I don't trust PG&E) and set reserve to between 60% and 70%. However, with hot days and ACs on, I cannot make it all the way from 2pm to 9pm with that higher reserve. Thus, I will start pulling from the grid somewhere between 5pm and 7pm right when the overall Peak Demand hits.
Thus, the "doing my share" is that I will set to backup only until 5ish and then change to Cost Savings to reduce my usage at Peak Demand.
So the arbitrage netted my a large swing in my annual NEM. Went from ~+$200 w/o PW (PWs were added to existing PV) to ~negative $950 even though I was still a net user not producer of kWh. Obviously, the negative NEM just goes away.
So this summer knowing I have a lot of NEM leeway, I decided to prioritize backup in case of unforeseen outage (again because I don't trust PG&E) and set reserve to between 60% and 70%. However, with hot days and ACs on, I cannot make it all the way from 2pm to 9pm with that higher reserve. Thus, I will start pulling from the grid somewhere between 5pm and 7pm right when the overall Peak Demand hits.
Thus, the "doing my share" is that I will set to backup only until 5ish and then change to Cost Savings to reduce my usage at Peak Demand.
