Liberty Utilities files for Tesla battery pilot in NH

[tga]

@tga - how did your PWs do this winter? Oct-Feb was rough in the MWV between the extreme cold and cloud cover, although our PWs did ok with a little manual tuning. Only one major outage for which we switched off the mini-split heatpumps and used the boiler to conserve power.

Several storm watch activations. The battery starts charging right away when storm watch goes active (even if it's late afternoon critical peak).

We'll see what happens this winter when my available solar drops significantly - I'm afraid I may not generate enough solar to add 20% to the battery for the critical peak period.

It got pretty ugly for a couple of weeks - I had several days when the battery was completely empty due to little sun and snow-covered panels. I have lots of pine trees to the south (some on my property, some on conservation land) which limit direct sun in the winter.

I've noticed It's hard to tell when peak period discharges occurred.

Now that solar conditions are improved, I'm producing more than I need for the critical peak period. For example, yesterday 7kWh of solar, 5.3kWh to the powerwalls, 4.1kW from them during critical peak (enough to cover self-supply for the afternoon). Today, 12.1kWh of solar, 6 kWh to the powerwalls. I should have no problem self-supplying today (with plenty of reserve left).

I am not the only customer with insufficient production in the winter. Liberty is currently petitioning the PUC to allow solar customers to charge during off-peak periods. See filing #80, 1/22/21 and on - New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission and the initial fling - https://puc.nh.gov/Regulatory/Docke...9_2021-01-22_GSEC_TECH_STATEMENT_TEBBETTS.PDF

Hopefully the request gets approved.

 

[zƬesla]

I’m with Eversource so different setup. May not be an option for you but I’ve kept Storm mode off and been monitoring sky cover forecast and PW reserve to see if I need to enable it. Like you, I have a bunch of pines that block most of my morning winter production until close to Noon. Running mini-splits for heat really takes a toll, however I think we’ll come out ahead of using the oil boiler for baseboard heating.

 

[tga]

I’m with Eversource so different setup. May not be an option for you but I’ve kept Storm mode off and been monitoring sky cover forecast and PW reserve to see if I need to enable it. Like you, I have a bunch of pines that block most of my morning winter production until close to Noon. Running mini-splits for heat really takes a toll, however I think we’ll come out ahead of using the oil boiler for baseboard heating.

Yes, I would have liked to have been able to shut off storm watch until off-peak and have it start charging then, but Liberty takes control of most of the settings (backup vs ToU mode, start/stop times for the different ToU periods, backup reserve %, etc). I could play with those settings from the app initially when the batteries were first installed, but after they were registered with the Liberty program all those settings went away. I suppose from their perspective it's easy to control the settings themselves vs making sure the participants have set everything up correctly.

I did think about shutting off the switches on the packs and waiting until off peak and turning them back on once we entered off-peak, but I didn't know if that might mess something up.

When we renovate I'm going to replace the aging oil boiler with mini-splits, and use wood pellets for additional heating in the dead of winter.