> I live in Berkeley. PG&E’s peak EV-A rate for generation plus distribution was $.92 this summer
I live in the same service area. The peak EV2A rate (including both generation and distribution) is currently $0.55/kWh, and the off-peak is $0.24/kWh.
Not sure where you are getting $0.92/kWh, but would be curious to learn.
> It’s news to me that load shifting (if you’ve got batteries and solar) isn’t allowed by the CPUC, that does take the wind out of my sails a bit. But the peak rates are so high that just zeroing out my peak consumption is still probably worth it.
Load shifting in the sense of shifting your load to different times to consume cleaner/cheaper electricity from the grid, is fine and even encouraged by the CPUC. There are all kinds of programs to encourage this. You can achieve this by simple behavioral changes, timed appliance runs, or by using battery storage.
What you can't do as an individual homeowner, AFAIK, is arbitrage power by buying low from the grid and selling back high to the grid later.
> Does the system come with a “disconnect from the grid during emergencies” shunt?
> I’ve heard conflicting reports about the availability and legality of those systems.
The only "emergency" that causes a disconnect is a power outage. That's no different than what solar inverters already do. The difference with the batteries is that when that happens, they form an isolated microgrid on your premises, thereby providing backup for that scenario.
What other sort of emergencies were you imagining? If you mean minimizing grid load during peak grid load events, then that's what the virtual peaker programs do, and those are completely legal, and active participants in the CAISO energy markets.
I live in the same service area. The peak EV2A rate (including both generation and distribution) is currently $0.55/kWh, and the off-peak is $0.24/kWh.
https://www.pge.com/en_US/residential/rate-plans/rate-plan-o...
Not sure where you are getting $0.92/kWh, but would be curious to learn.
> It’s news to me that load shifting (if you’ve got batteries and solar) isn’t allowed by the CPUC, that does take the wind out of my sails a bit. But the peak rates are so high that just zeroing out my peak consumption is still probably worth it.
Load shifting in the sense of shifting your load to different times to consume cleaner/cheaper electricity from the grid, is fine and even encouraged by the CPUC. There are all kinds of programs to encourage this. You can achieve this by simple behavioral changes, timed appliance runs, or by using battery storage.
What you can't do as an individual homeowner, AFAIK, is arbitrage power by buying low from the grid and selling back high to the grid later.
> Does the system come with a “disconnect from the grid during emergencies” shunt?
> I’ve heard conflicting reports about the availability and legality of those systems.
The only "emergency" that causes a disconnect is a power outage. That's no different than what solar inverters already do. The difference with the batteries is that when that happens, they form an isolated microgrid on your premises, thereby providing backup for that scenario.
What other sort of emergencies were you imagining? If you mean minimizing grid load during peak grid load events, then that's what the virtual peaker programs do, and those are completely legal, and active participants in the CAISO energy markets.