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Is there anything better than ohmconnect in PGE California service area
- Thread starter garrity
- Start date
I also dropped out because powerwall and solar did not help, and you were often times punished.
HOWEVER, I stumbled upon the Export Everything button end of June 2022 and that changed everything.
Now you can choose when to dump your powerwall contents to the grid. Ohmhours have occurred mostly between 7-8pm and you can usually predict what days it will fall on because of temp. However, this last Flex Alert Date that the Tesla VPP started on was shockingly not an ohm alert day.
bottom line with 2 powerwalls
20 events from june 28 till now
13 being ohmhours with 24 hours advance notice mostly lasting 1 hour, a few 2 hours
7 autoohms w/ 15 min advance notice usually lasting only 15 minutes
Total earnings and counting $325 in the bank from paypal. If someone knows of a better power aggregator please let me know.
Where Tesla VPP is lacking:
few events
this last event lasted 3 hours each powerwall can pump out 5kw and won't last 3 hours at that rate and leave reserve.
BTW my brother in law has powerwalls but no export everything button how does one get that in the app? he has the same tesla app version as I do too.
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I believe SunRun customers and those with more than two Powerwalls may not be able to get that option. Do either of these apply to him?
well, i asked in the VPP thread but it appears you have the answers i was looking for.
sounds like OhmConnect actually credits you for exporting energy during an OhmHour then? not just reducing your demand? because i am using Export Everything during peak hours, a VPP event doesn't really get me that much as my average exports during the normal event times is already really high.
btw i think this recent VPP event was a test; the grid was in maintenance mode and there was a flex alert declared. based on the ISO's webpage it didn't look like the grid was in any real trouble.
I commented in the VPP thread, but no - if you use Export Everything daily, you won't gain much from OhmConnect as you will set a very negative baseline from which you need to reduce further. You would need to actually reduce demand compared to baseline days (turning off central A/C is the biggest thing that reduce demand). Or with the typical day-ahead alert for OhmHours, you could not export the day ahead, which could impact 10-20% of your baseline amount for some proportional gains.
OhmConnect was revamped about a year ago, it killed the huge multipliers some folks had for streak bonuses or large % reductions, but at present still pays out $1-1.40/kwh which is not shabby, esp if you have a large multi-kwh tool you can manipulate like Powerwall or central A/C - you just have to manage your baseline vs event days.
Manipulating Powerwall or A/C helps a lot with odd way they do their Silver/Gold/Platinum bonuses for solar customers. Solar owners have to net reduce by absolute 0.3 kw or 0.8 kw for Gold/Platinum tiers. Easy to manipulate with Powerwall or A/C, hard for anything else. But the bonus multipliers only increase your cash-out by 5-10% now, used to be bigger.
ok thanks, so basically the same situation VPP. this is actually kind of stupid because what i am doing every day is of benefit to the grid, probably more so than just reducing consumption from time to time, but we don’t get any compensation for it. as i mentioned in the other thread EE has basically just let me undo the huge price increases that the new peak times imposed on solar owners.
When I participated in OhmConnect, I used automation to avoid discharging during the OhmHour periods. You could still do this by limiting the export everything to discharge from 4-6 (or even 3-6) on non-event days. The main question is whether they are now getting compensated for exports. The situation a couple of years ago was that the demand-reduction pilot only compensated for reduction of consumption, not extra exports (i.e. -2 kWh was the same as 0 kWh during the event), so the rules for solar participants were always kind of strange. I worked around this by participating only during hours after sundown.
I tried OhmConnect opting in only after sundown, because of the weird solar rules, but eventually got no events for a year. Only when they revamped last year, initially with no event opt-out, that I was defaulted back in.
Ironically now I've seen more events before sundown now, many at 6pm, one was as early as 3pm IIRC. I'm mostly shaded late afternoon anyways, but I stay opted-in because their modest rewards for automated smart devices give me about $1 for each event with no manual effort ..
Bingo. I only use export everything during ohmevents. I guess to maximize payback you can dump everything the last few hours of peak time on a daily basis. The ohmconnect route is much more valuable and less wear on battery.
.
I’ve shown my payback so far
Is there any better way to get compensated using powerwall?
You might want to reread the language for defining baseline, as the way I read it net exports over the prior time period is defined to be zero, I.e. any exports during the VPP time slot are considered net. I may be misreading it, of course.
All the best,
BG
