Other than having a battery backup for when the grid goes down, what is your rationale for the expense of a PW2?
I live in Palm Beach (FPL) and have solar. The only benefit of having the PW2s is for power supply when grid is down. With net metering the PW2s do nothing to help with my power bill so there is no ROI. Also, I would need 4 PW2s to power my home entirely when grid goes down. I can get a full house generator with a buried propane tank cheaper than the PW2s.
Is it just to be green? Am I wrong in my understanding on how net metering works?
There are a couple things that you need to find out about how FPL work/bill, I have Lake Worth Utility so I can't speak much about how Netmetering work for FPL. From my understanding the Netmetering doesn't help us Solar home owner much. I will use an example (these are just made up number):
During the day (none peak hour), the electricity is $0.09/kwh, my solar panel would generate more electricity than I can use, so when I "sell" it back to the grid, they pay me $0.03 (i.e cost price). They turn around and resell the electric I fed them, and charge other customers for $0.09/kwh, so they make profit out of my solar panel. My Solar company told me just because I can put 20 panels on my roof, doesn't mean I should because the surplus will just be a bad investment and the utility company is profit from it.
Here is the upsetting part, when the sun goes down and when I get home, I use electricity from the grid during peak hour, which could be at $0.13/kwh. With Netmetering, I could be paying $0.9/kwh (the rate when I have surplus), or $0.13/kwh (no one has the answer about how the grid/meter/bill works) the moment my solar can't power my house.
By having the PW2, I will store the surplus electricity I generated during the day, when I get home, I use it instead of sell the surplus to the grid for pennies then draw it back later for an inflated price. In a sense, the PW2 will further lower the electric bill in my case.
Since you have FPL, go through this site and understand the TOU/Peak time period:
FPL | Rates | Residential Time of Use Rate
Also, when you get home, your electricity usage will only go up during peak hours, so your PW2 may drain faster during those hours, and I believe you can program the PW2 to draw power from the grid during none peak hours at the cheaper rate (A lot of Tesla car owners want to do this). Since after 11 pm, most people goes to sleep, electricity usage goes down, so I don't think you need 4 PW2 batteries to run your house because you only need to keep the essential things running like fridge/freezer/AC and light.
Hope this make sense. I'm still research and these are what I understand so far.
