Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
Earth Power

California Successfully Tests 'Virtual Power Plant', Drawing Power From Batteries in 100,000 Homes (yahoo.com) 104

Posted by EditorDavid from the crowdsourcing-energy dept.
"California's biggest electric utilities pulled off a record-breaking test..." reports Semafor, "during the 7pm-9pm window that is typically its time of peak demand as people come home from work." Pacific Gas & Electric and other top California power companies switched on residential batteries in more than 100,000 homes and drew power from them into the broader statewide grid. The purpose of the test — the largest ever in the state, which has by far the most home battery capacity in the U.S. — was to see just how much power is really there for the utility to tap, and to ensure it could be switched on, effectively running the grid in reverse, without causing a crash.

The result, which the research firm Brattle published this week, was 535 megawatts, equal to adding a big hydro dam or a half-sized nuclear reactor at a fraction of the cost. "Four years ago this capacity didn't even exist," Kendrick Li, PG&E's director of clean energy programs, told Semafor. "Now it's a really attractive option for us. It would be silly not to harness what our customers have installed...." Last week's test proved that in times of peak demand, PG&E can lean on its customers' batteries rather than turn on a gas-fired peaker plant or risk a blackout, Li said.

Virtual power plants (VPPs) also facilitate the addition of more solar energy on the grid: At the moment, California has so much solar generation at peak hours that it can push the wholesale power price close to or even below zero, a headache for grid managers and a disincentive for renewable project developers. The careful manipulation of networked residential batteries smooths out the timing disparity between peak sunshine at midday and peak demand in the evening, allowing the excess to be soaked up and redeployed when it's actually needed, and making power cheaper for everyone. The expanded use of VPPs shouldn't be noticeable to battery owners, Li said, except for the money back on their power bill; nothing about the process prevents them from running their AC or dishwasher while their battery is being tapped. The network can also run in reverse, with the utility taking excess power from the grid at times of low demand and sending it into home batteries for storage.

California could easily reach over a gigawatt of VPP capacity within five years, Li said. Nationwide, a Department of Energy study during the Biden administration forecast that VPP capacity could reach up to 160 gigawatts by 2030, essentially negating the need for dozens of new fossil fuel power plants, with no emissions and at a far lower cost. In 2024, utilities in 34 states moved to initiate or expand VPP networks, according to the advocacy group VP3.
Even with a reduction in federal credits, virtual power plants "offer a way for residential solar-plus-storage systems to remain economically attractive for homeowners — who get paid for the withdrawn power," the article points out — and "a way to make better use of clean energy resources that have already been built."

Sunrun's distributed battery fleet "delivered more than two-thirds of the energy," notes Electrek, "In total, the event pumped an average of 535 megawatts (MW) onto the grid — enough to power over half of San Francisco... This isn't a one-off. Sunrun's fleet already helped drop peak demand earlier this summer, delivering 325 MW during a similar event on June 24.

"The company compensates customers up to $150 per battery per season for participating."

California Successfully Tests 'Virtual Power Plant', Drawing Power From Batteries in 100,000 Homes More | Reply

California Successfully Tests 'Virtual Power Plant', Drawing Power From Batteries in 100,000 Homes

Comments Filter:

  • not the same (Score:3, Insightful)

    by phantomfive ( 622387 ) on Saturday August 09, 2025 @10:35AM (#65577308) Journal

    was 535 megawatts, equal to adding a big hydro dam or a half-sized nuclear reactor at a fraction of the cost

    It's really not the same, for a number of reasons.

    • Re:not the same (Score:5, Informative)

      by larryjoe ( 135075 ) on Saturday August 09, 2025 @11:40AM (#65577388)

      was 535 megawatts, equal to adding a big hydro dam or a half-sized nuclear reactor at a fraction of the cost

      It's really not the same, for a number of reasons.

      Well, yeah, but most of the differences are advantageous. The power is basically instantaneous, can be cycled quickly, and has no ongoing environmental negatives. The batteries work as both a source and sink. Ongoing operational costs are far better. The batteries are distributed across the state, which means better robustness.

      • Re:not the same (Score:4, Insightful)

        by Kernel Kurtz ( 182424 ) on Saturday August 09, 2025 @11:46AM (#65577404)

        was 535 megawatts, equal to adding a big hydro dam or a half-sized nuclear reactor at a fraction of the cost

        It's really not the same, for a number of reasons.

        Well, yeah, but most of the differences are advantageous. The power is basically instantaneous, can be cycled quickly, and has no ongoing environmental negatives. The batteries work as both a source and sink. Ongoing operational costs are far better. The batteries are distributed across the state, which means better robustness.

        Plus someone else paid for most of the infrastructure. That's the utilities' favorite part.

        • I think the most entertaining irony here is California's abysmal grid infrastructure is effectively being subsidized by exactly the kind of people that its politicians blame all of their problems on.

        • False, the infrastructure was paid for the utilities. At best you can claim no new infrastructure was required as part of this as it used existing infrastructure.

          • I see nothing saying the utilities bought all these people batteries. It says "customer-owned" in the part I read. Of course I meant they had no (or minimal) capital, not operating costs. I thought that went without saying.

      • was 535 megawatts, equal to adding a big hydro dam or a half-sized nuclear reactor at a fraction of the cost

        It's really not the same, for a number of reasons.

        Well, yeah, but most of the differences are advantageous. The power is basically instantaneous, can be cycled quickly, and has no ongoing environmental negatives. The batteries work as both a source and sink. Ongoing operational costs are far better. The batteries are distributed across the state, which means better robustness.

        The main difference is these batteries store power that was generated by something else and can only provide power for hours. The hydro dam or nuclear plant is generating power and can do it continuously. That's why the cost comparison makes no sense.

        • The main difference is these batteries store power that was generated by something else and can only provide power for hours. The hydro dam or nuclear plant is generating power and can do it continuously. That's why the cost comparison makes no sense.

          The more apt comparison is with natural gas generators, since the goal is temporary fill-in power and not baseline power. Hydro and nuclear are good for baseline continuous power, but are not useful for fill-in power. The goal is these batteries is short-term, unpredictable power during evenings, so the power shift from daylight solar to evenings using batteries that were already there for other purposes is almost "free" in terms of capital expenses.

    • It's really not the same, for a number of reasons.

      That's true! The comparison to a nuclear reactor is senseless, but on the hydro dam side: No additional distribution infrastructure is required, in fact the power is available nearer the point of consumption so it actually reduces infrastructure demands. Output can be switched more rapidly than hydro. No water has to be pumped uphill to recharge it. There's no single large infrastructure target attractive to terrorists or other enemies. The owners pay for installation and maintenance, The People don't have

      • The owners pay for installation and maintenance, The People don't have to foot the bill.

        Those with a Tesla solar+storage system and a VPP contract will be getting paid for providing this service and for the energy they provide to the grid. That means "the people" will be footing the bill in some manner, they don't get a VPP for nothing.

        • Those with a Tesla solar+storage system and a VPP contract will be getting paid for providing this service and for the energy they provide to the grid. That means "the people" will be footing the bill in some manner, they don't get a VPP for nothing.

          That is of course a typically worthless and therefore on-brand take, since I was obviously talking about its creation, and we always have to pay for power.

    • was 535 megawatts, equal to adding a big hydro dam or a half-sized nuclear reactor at a fraction of the cost

      It's really not the same, for a number of reasons.

      If you want to be pedantic, sure. But in a practical sense it is the same. It's a source of power that's available when the grid needs it the most.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hawk ( 1151 )

      >It's really not the same, for a number of reasons.

      OK, make it a dam with a huge stopcock, or half a nuclear plant that defies the laws of physics by switching suddenly on and off, and to partial power.

  • $150 per SEASON? (Score:3)

    by Sethra ( 55187 ) on Saturday August 09, 2025 @10:37AM (#65577314)

    The power companies are clearly profiting from that - they are charging for more for what they take. Instead, they should be giving homeowners full credit on their bill at the same rate as they themselves charge. The homeowner is the one who invested in that infrastructure, NOT the power company.

    • The real problem is that electricity prices arenâ(TM)t based on the actual cost of delivering it. To match costs, the fixed infrastructure fee (just for having the hookup) would need to be much higher, while the price per kWh would be lower. But if that happened, demand would increase, environmentalists would object, and low-income households would struggle to pay their bills.

      Without restructuring pricing, the real cost of having the hookup stays hidden. This keeps the per-kWh price artificially high

    • The power companies are clearly profiting from that - they are charging for more for what they take. Instead, they should be giving homeowners full credit on their bill at the same rate as they themselves charge. The homeowner is the one who invested in that infrastructure, NOT the power company.

      This is the big issue. Who owns the batteries (i.e., who gets to control the batteries), and who owns the energy in the batteries. It seems like for the $150 per season, PG&E owns the energy. They "allow" the battery owner to use the energy in their own home, but PG&E gets to pull whatever energy they want.

      I wonder if PG&E charges the batteries during the day, and the home owner uses that energy in the evening (say to charge a car), is that energy free?

      Whether $150 is worthwhile depends on th

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        Whether $150 is worthwhile depends on the spreadsheet.

        Unless I'm misunderstanding, it depends on only two things:

        • The number of kWh drained per season.
        • The cost of the battery.

        Batteries are a wear item. A Tesla Model X battery costs $15k refurbished, probably more like $30k new. That gives you 1,500 cycles of 100 kWh, or 150,000 kWh. That comes to twenty cents per kWh.

        Actual grid-tie batteries like PowerWall are even more expensive. PowerWall 3 comes in at $15,400 for 13.5 kW that will probably last about 4,000 cycles, or 54,000 kWh total. That's 28.52 cen

        • I saw the 150/season and thought that's crazy. If anyone knows, in Cal if you do this, does Cal use time of day pricing for this? If you got 35c/KWh when you supply at peak (or even more as I think wholesale can reach numbers as bad as a buck a kwh) and you could charge up when prices are low say 2c/KWh, then you'd be making 33c/KWh. If you cycled 10KWh/day, 3.30/day or almost 100/mo. That makes sense with your battery cost numbers. The 150 would be a nice add for having batteries located in your house and

        • If that's the amount that they would typically draw each day, I'm willing to bet that a whole lot of people do the math and turn this off after one season, because they're getting seriously ripped off.

          And you're getting paid only for the power they suck out of your home battery system. You're not getting paid for the wear this puts on your battery system, burning through its charging cycles and pushing it faster to end-of-life.

      • They "allow" the battery owner to use the energy in their own home, but PG&E gets to pull whatever energy they want.

        Can anyone back this up by posting a link to the contract between the homeowner and those operating the VPP? Why would anyone sign up if it meant the utility can take all the energy they want from homeowners? Energy they might need as a safety measure because someone in the house is in need of an oxygen generator or something.

        I'll see people try to compare electricity to water, something we can do without for hours to days, than like air, which is something we can do without for only seconds, perhaps minu

    • Why capitalism only for companies? Why can't we all set a price we are willing to sell electricity for on the open market? I thought in CA we were deregulated?

      As a Solar only owner in CA I've seen the economics of solar change over time and it's only worse for the people who actually own the infrastructure. I'm glad I have solar still but economically it was and still is a gamble since we have very little control over how much we pay for electricity if we go over our (variable) production. It never made

    • Yes but California residents are asking for net metering, which includes both production + distribution. The utilities are happy to pay residential battery (BESS) producers the same rate they pay the other instantly-dispatachable producers, which can often be, but is not always, (instantly dispatchable production > residential retail price + distribution). Residents want to be paid based on the right side of that equation, but utilities don't want to sign up for the risk or potential undesirable market r

      • California residents are asking for net metering, which includes both production + distribution

        Many of us California residents are asking for the production and distribution to be separated, with an independent entity managing the distribution, and being restricted to only managing that aspect of our power system.

        In California, regulation basically prevents making any substantial profit from anything but production of new generation infrastructure, so PGE is highly motivated to prevent as much of that as possible. Hence their economic attacks on distributed solar infrastructure.

    • The power companies are clearly profiting from that - they are charging for more for what they take.

      No. Most evenings recently the opposite has been true.

    • Yup.

      When PG&E paid off the CPUC to slash surplus solar rates down to a fraction of what they charge for sending electricity TO me; is why I paused my solar buildout and re-worked the plan to include batteries and a switchboard with a cutout that lets not a single joule out to the grid. Because I'll be damned if the equipment *I* pay for is going to benefit PG&E instead of me; particularly when that pack of rat-bastards have still never faced a proper reckoning for all the people they've killed thou

      • Curious, I too have recently thought about adding batteries with transfer to avoid my juice mixing with their juice. In my case, they pay me 9c/kwh and charge me 11+ for joules that are routed from my panels to my home. All they are doing is stabilizing the 60Hz for the inverter and consuming the excess I don't need.

        That said, do you plan on dropping PGE completely? Is that viable? Because dropping the utility completely saves me the monthly connect fee of around 20/mo and it too is increasing.

        If you are ho

    • Instead, they should be giving homeowners full credit on their bill at the same rate as they themselves charge.

      Your bill is not made up by wholesale power costs, or even retail power costs. It's made up of a myriad of different line items, only one of them here is running in reverse. You don't pay consumers for the cost of maintaining infrastructure to their houses, even when they export power back to you.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Sethra ( 55187 )

        You're implying that out of the hundreds they charge every month, only a tiny pittance, amounting to just over $12 a month, accounts for the actual equivalent production of power that they are taking from you? That everything else is infrastructure?

        No, just no.

  • If yes, will it remain voluntary? Yeah, I doubt it too.

    Who sets the return power price? Could homeowners unionize and sell power back at their price and not that set by an outside entity?

    • If the infrastructure is there to support it then it should in fact not be voluntary, it should be part of the agreement when you are hooked to the grid, it's kind a baked into the concept of a power grid.

      The rate should be set by the state that is fair to everyone involved. This should be a "good for everyone" situation if it's actually regulated and supported correctly.

  • net metering 3.0 (Score:3)

    by awwshit ( 6214476 ) on Saturday August 09, 2025 @11:14AM (#65577348)

    With Net Metering 3.0, the power company can go fuck itself. SCE wants to use power from my batteries? Okay its $1000 per kilo-watt, plus fees I have yet to determine or calculate. Oh, and it goes up 35% every 6 months.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      In the UK you can get a tariff that pays the spot price for electricity when you export to the grid. I've looked at it, but overall it's actually slightly better to take the flat feed-in rate, at least from what I can tell from historic data.

      People in the UK do this and it works out quite well for them. They get a cheap overnight rate that is a little under half the rate they get for feeding energy back into the grid during the day. Charge the battery at night, run the house from it during the day, and expo

      • Under previous net metering plans, retail customers were compensated at their retail rate for excess solar power. Under NM3.0, you are compensated at some wholesale rate that does not include transmission and other fees in the retail rate, there is something like a 75% drop in the rate paid. Also under NM3.0 the rate changes hourly and based on time day and time of year.

        What this does is incentivizes home battery systems. Where you store your excess power and use it in the evening. Most of the battery syste

    • With Net Metering 3.0, the power company can go fuck itself. SCE wants to use power from my batteries? Okay its $1000 per kilo-watt, plus fees I have yet to determine or calculate. Oh, and it goes up 35% every 6 months.

      What makes your electrons worth so much more than the market value?

      • Supply and demand. I have them when the grid needs them.

      • If I'm on a time-of-use rate plan, why is my rate highest in the middle of the day when solar is at its maximum? Supply and demand.

    • With Net Metering 3.0, the power company can go fuck itself. SCE wants to use power from my batteries? Okay its $1000 per kilo-watt, plus fees I have yet to determine or calculate. Oh, and it goes up 35% every 6 months.

      Shut up serf. You don't get a voice here. Pay, move, or die. Those are your only options. Suck it up. It is for the Nation after all. Are you not a patriotic American?

  • Megawatt-hours (Score:5, Interesting)

    by PPH ( 736903 ) on Saturday August 09, 2025 @11:29AM (#65577364)

    535 megawatts,

    How many megawatt-hours? It might be half a nuke in terms of power, but that nuke can run continuously for weeks, months.

    I think it's an interesting test from a capablity point of view. But it doesn't provide enough info to demonstrate the viability of home storage to bridge across intervals of renewable unavailability.

    And as others have pointed out: What do the utilities pay homeowners back for that stored energy? Wholesale rates? Sorry. Not interested. I'd be better off keeping my power on my side of the meter. And offsetting retail rates for my own convenience. Not when some San Francisco multi-billionaires want to run their hot tubs.

    • Re:Megawatt-hours (Score:5, Insightful)

      by VaccinesCauseAdults ( 7114361 ) on Saturday August 09, 2025 @12:57PM (#65577582)

      How many megawatt-hours?

      The linked paper has some details and graph of instantaneous power over the two days. There was 535 MW average power from batteries to grid during the peak-time 7pm to 9pm event, so that is 1070 MW-h total energy transferred. This energy was transferred from the grid to the batteries earlier that day during off-peak 8am to 4pm. Looking at the graph, it appears that the same transfers could potentially occur every day.

      Of course it cannot provide 535 MW continuously, but that is not the point. The point of non-continuous power supply, such as batteries, is to add power when demand is high. For that specific mission, this appears to be potentially viable.

    • 535 megawatts,

      How many megawatt-hours? It might be half a nuke in terms of power, but that nuke can run continuously for weeks, months.

      I think it's an interesting test from a capablity point of view. But it doesn't provide enough info to demonstrate the viability of home storage to bridge across intervals of renewable unavailability.

      And as others have pointed out: What do the utilities pay homeowners back for that stored energy? Wholesale rates? Sorry. Not interested. I'd be better off keeping my power on my side of the meter. And offsetting retail rates for my own convenience. Not when some San Francisco multi-billionaires want to run their hot tubs.

      The goal is to help with peak demand. Continuous isn't necessary for that.

      On summer evenings when demand is high, it makes sense to sell some of your stored energy to the grid. PGE will pay you _more_ than the buy price this evening during peak hours. Keeping it on your side of the meter is dumb in that situation since doing so effectively shifts the period you sell from the evening, when you get paid a premium price, to the afternoon when PGE pays you almost nothing.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        This also discounts the use of solar panels - which may mean you never paid for the electricity you sold to the grid. Your batteries simply charged up during the afternoon when prices are low but solar production is high.

        Then you'd sell the power tot he grid during periods of high demand when prices are high, which can easily offset what you might draw from the grid during periods where your batteries might be depleted.

        Of course, you likely have a surplus of electricity, so doing things like using the exces

    • but that nuke can run continuously for weeks, months.

      And that is a problem, not a benefit. There is far FAR more to running a grid than providing a large baseload. This isn't the 1890s anymore. In fact a large VPP would be a great thing to combine with a *small* nuclear plant.

  • How do I block Southern California Edison (SoCalEd) from draining our backup battery? I had the battery installed because of health reasons.

    My wife has COPD and Parkinson's. She needs electricity 24/7 to run an oxygen concentrator. She needs electricity to run the stair-lift in our two-story house. I have sleep apnea. I need electricity at night to run the CPAP machine that keeps me breathing.

    During a public safety power shutoff (PSPS) earlier this year, we were without electricity from SoCalEd for mor

    • Relax. These are specialized battery systems that are centrally managed by the power company. The system you built is completely under your control and cannot be hijacked.

    • How do I block Southern California Edison (SoCalEd) from draining our backup battery?

      This program is currently opt-in.

      a PSPS is not my only concern. SoCalEd fails in my area without warning, without regard for the weather, at any time of the year. Sometimes, it is only for a few minutes; sometimes it is for many hours. If it happens while we are sleeping, we might not realize that we must report the outage.

      I do wonder why utilities don't seem to recognize outages until reported. They have plenty of information from smart meters to know when they occur, and what the affected area is. My understanding is that the data is sent about every 15 minutes, so they should really never take much longer than that to know an outage has occurred and what the scope is.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by EvilSS ( 557649 )

        I do wonder why utilities don't seem to recognize outages until reported. They have plenty of information from smart meters to know when they occur, and what the affected area is. My understanding is that the data is sent about every 15 minutes, so they should really never take much longer than that to know an outage has occurred and what the scope is.

        My utility does. They can detect them when networked equipment on the grid drops off or smart meters stop reporting in. It also helps tell them where the problem is.

      • a PSPS is not my only concern. SoCalEd fails in my area without warning, without regard for the weather, at any time of the year. Sometimes, it is only for a few minutes; sometimes it is for many hours. If it happens while we are sleeping, we might not realize that we must report the outage.

        I do wonder why utilities don't seem to recognize outages until reported. They have plenty of information from smart meters to know when they occur, and what the affected area is. My understanding is that the data is sent about every 15 minutes, so they should really never take much longer than that to know an outage has occurred and what the scope is.

        They do recognize outages automatically. The poster's anecdotal claims about SCE need to be taken with several grains of salt. I get my power from SCE and I wonder where his "area" could possibly be. I have never encountered anything like this, nor heard of this from anybody I know.

        • They do recognize outages automatically

          PGE is shit at it, though. I've reported a night time outage that went longer than 15 minutes before my report and they told me I was first, and it wasn't on the outage map before I reported it either. So I have no personal knowledge of SCE, but I do know PGE can't find their ass with assistance.

          • Happened to me too, in San Jose, several times in recent years. Once I was unable to get within several blocks of my dwelling due to some kind of gas leak (the police evacuated the area).

    • How do I block Southern California Edison (SoCalEd) from draining our backup battery? .

      You have a battery and yet you are somehow unaware that the VPP plan is voluntary? Seriously?

    • If you ever look into VPPs all those questions will be answered, and will be answered to your satisfaction as well. No they won't drain your battery by any more than the explicit amount you permit them to.

  • Financially, it's bad for customers
    For something like this to be fair, utilities would need to pay the battery owners a lot more
    We need a good alternative to investor owned utilities

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by radl33t ( 900691 )
      Its financially great for customers. They can chose to opt in or not if that price meets their threshold. Ideally it would be structured in such a way that they are compensated for the reserve capacity (kW) that they hold available and the energy delivered (kWh) when that capacity is requested. The only missing step is for them to name their price and suddenly this is how the electricity market operates.

  • There should be some tax credit... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    V2V charging, or charging from batteries is one thing, but unless there is some compensation, why should I be paying for wear and tear cycles on my batteries, which can amount to a lot of money when those huge stacks of LiFePO4 batteries start dropping under 80% capacity.

    I also buy a battery bank so I know that when there is a power outage, I have "x" amount of time. Coming back to find the battery discharged because some third party decided they wanted to pilfer a resource I pay for (I pay for the incomin

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by radl33t ( 900691 )
      This is ultimately a trivial problem to solve. It consists of a few lines of code to quantify what you care about (your backup/emergency needs, cycling wear and tear, time of day, etc) and set compensation you require to mitigate those concerns.

    • Of course there's compensation. The VPP rebate is substantial.

  • But getting people to put their smart thermostats and industry with reschedule-able large loads on a real-time power conservation program to cut usage during peak times is also effectively a "virtual" power plant by cutting demand. Having both distributed batteries and load shedding would be great too. Just don't let the batteries be NMC or LiPo fire hazards.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by radl33t ( 900691 )
      It's a lot more reliable than thermostats, but you are right this just an extension of existing demand response technology, which has served as an integral component of grid management for at least >40 years.

  • This is probably not a benefit to the homeowner, but whether it is depends on the pricing.
    Batteries degrade with each charge/discharge cycle. Putting a battery in your home is an expensive proposition, and it will eventually have to be replaced. The initial cost of purchase, eventual replacement, and the environmental impact of recycling (hopefully) or disposal (realistically) of the dead battery must be considered.
    Knowing PG&E's track record, and that of California in general, I will NOT consent to thi

  • And, how much is this wonderful advance going to cost me in a higher electric bill?

    • Just look at the prices of grid capable hot water heaters that are California compliant. They are roughly 15% more for the grid capable design. Where they will get you is the equipment and installation costs. And they will just make it mandatory for new builds.

  • The utilities will try to game this so that there's little incentive for the homeowner to install batteries. They want to own their own kit.

    They'll want the power sold to them at the "avoided cost" (https://energytheory.com/avoided-cost-rates-for-solar-power/) while charging the full retail rate for any power draw from the utilities when solar isn't producing.

    The big 3 investor-owned utilities (PG&E, SCE, and SDG&E) have the California public utilities commission (CPUC) under their thumb. This will

  • Here is what I told the little cunt from Sunrun who rang my doorbell while wearing a suspiciously clean hardhat, hi-vis vest, and the all important clipboard:: "You are peddling finance contracts, not solar. Get the fuck off my property and do not come back."

    Note that my latest PG&E (Pedal Generator for Electricity: ref. Soylent Green) rate was $0.50269 off-peak and $0.62569 peak (4-9 PM).

    "Off with their heads. Off with everybody's heads."

  • This could be handled by market mechanisms instead of central administration of the systems. Provide fully flexible contracts and mandate that new battery/inverter systems can receive those price signals (use powerline communication for high reliability) to by default make optimal use of those prices for the ROI of the batteries. Most people will leave it on default, a couple people will reserve more minimum charge for emergencies, etc, but all can benefit without turning over the keys to the system to some

    • In a perfect world, maybe. World is not perfect. Austin Energy which used to be a really good utility 20 years ago now sucks like I guess the ones in Cal. I put in panels some 20 years ago, and we had net metering. It was pricey back then, but I knew prices for juice would go up and with net, the value of my juice would go up. Hence I might get my money back. Around 8 years after installing (maybe 1/3rd of the way to getting my money back) they went from net to we pay you 11c/kwh and you pay us 10-12 depend

      • The natural gas being saved is only around 5 cents, so you are getting an incredibly sweet deal still.

        • No I'm not. I foolishly thought "the deal" would not change when I did it. As it was, "the deal" barely covered payback of the expenditure over the life of the system. And I was not even factoring in interest into the deal I could have gotten if I just dumped the money in a savings account let alone a decent return. I never would have done it had I know they'd change the deal at a whim. Like I said, corp's are malevolent., including cities that own utilities. They trick people whenever they can. And I'd poi

          • Oh, I looked up your codes, that's some fucking bullshit. I used to think Australia had some of the worst electricity regulations, a city in Texas doing so much worse is impressive. America, land of the codes.

            Vote with your feet?

            • Especially considering Austin is the liberal green capital of TX. Truly it makes zero sense the way they have screwed over the 1st adopters. Let's just say I have pointed out to several people in town who have considered panels and now they realize what a shitshow tens of thousands of dollars could become. I went from being an advocate to a watch your back.
  • Batteries, even LiFePo ones have a limited number of charge discharges. Why would anyone let the power company wear that down? This is a classic case of a crap power company not building or maintaining a proper grid, so they fool their customers into building it for them.

    • The number of charge/discharge cycles is unchanged with VPP. You just discharge a bit more during the evening with VPP. In exchange, they give you a large rebate, plus pay you premium peak prices for your juice. Nobody is fooling anybody.

      The sheer tonnage of uninformed comments for this article, by people who obviously have no knowledge of VPP, could stop a herd of charging elephants.

Slashdot Top Deals

This restaurant was advertising breakfast any time. So I ordered french toast in the renaissance. - Steven Wright, comedian

Close