Welcome to the solar truth I'm Adam Evans and I'm gonna be talking today
about how batteries can actually save you money. Batteries have always been
kind of an interesting situation with solar. A lot of people have
gotten them in the past for backup situations, they either a
prepper, preparing for the Armageddon. Or
just just want to be more grid-independent. That's okay
there's a lot of different battery options out there. A lot of
people are just familiar with the Tesla Powerwall, which hasn't even been
around that long. And the first the version couldn't even go off-grid.
It would store energy and return it when you're on the grid, but that doesn't
really do much for people unless your utility doesn't give you any credit for
stored energy. We'll get into that in a bit. It's called Net Energy Metering
where your meter can spin backward. Anyways, battery systems like that you
might have a pile of lead acid batteries in the garage and a couple of
different inverters and and controls transform transformers and shutoff
devices or transfer switches to power different things. Now though, grid
outages are pretty common. Especially Southern California you got
fires, you got wind, you got different situations where some people are getting
their power shut off multiple times a month for multiple days. It's
pretty crazy, so it's kind of a perfect storm now. A lot of
people want batteries just for backup power, just so they can have the
refrigerator running and internet and some utility is running when
the grid does go out. But batteries can actually save you money too. So if it can save you
money and you can do backup power it's it's amazing. And it can actually work
really well for a lot of people so that gets us into how batteries
can work with solar. First, this will be a little bit specific for California but
it applies to pretty much all utilities and states and countries. But you know
I'm most familiar with California and I'll talk about how it will work
when you don't have Net Energy Metering So first: What is Net Energy Metering?
I installed solar in my house 10 years ago now and I had
what's called Net Energy Metering 1.0. When you get a permit
when your solar finaled, when it's installed and you get a final permit from
your city or county. Then it is sent to Southern California
Edison or whatever utility company you have. Then they flip a switch and
turn Net Energy Metering on. So Net Energy Metering basically just allows
your meter to spin backwards, and then it shows up on your bill as a different way
to show your credit reflected for how much solar production you have versus
how much energy you're using outside of that. So you're using energy
at night because your solars not working. But then your meter might be
spinning backwards during the day when you're not home and your solar is
cranking and there's not much on besides your refrigerator and stuff.
Net Energy Metering 1.0 and specifically Edison was really great.
I'm grandfathered into it for 20 years I get full credit for the solar power
Mexico . . . alls I'm sayin
Dollar for dollar if you produce a
certain amount during the day and then you use a certain amount during the
the night I actually get more than full credit. I don't pay for that
nighttime production. My credit fully applies to it, plus my credit during the
day is more. I have a 75% solar system and I get paid back by Edison.
It was really good back then, it was also a little more expensive to do solar
back then. But there was also a tax grant and tax credit so it kind of
leveled out the cost. I did get grandfathered in which is great. Then
July 1st, 2017 came around and Edison reached over 5% solar.
They started worrying about too much solar coming into the
grid. They had to upgrade the infrastructure and actually had a
cap at 5% solar but before that cap hit, the the California Public Utility Commission
lifted the cap and
had them increased out to 10%. With that became that they moved to NEM 2.0.
With NEM 2.0 now you have to pay a little bit for your production at night, even if
you produced enough to cover it during the day. So now you don't get as good
of an exchange rate with solar. They also increased the minimum service charge. I pay a dollar a
month. They increase that minimum service charge to ten dollars a month because
the way Net Energy Metering works is they don't want you paying them one
month, and then paying you the next month. So the utility companies will just have
you pay a minimum service charge and then at the end of the year, either you
will pay them or they'll pay you. So that minimum went up to ten to
twelve dollars and pretty soon there will be NEM 3.0 and the
minimum might be thirty to fifty dollars a lot more. So even if you do 100% solar
you know you're still gonna be paying Edison or the utility company a bit. This
leads to what happened in Hawaii. You should definitely check out a
video of Hawaii, it is a whole another situation of its own. But about five
years ago in 2013/14 Hawaii pretty much banned solar, you know people had to wait
about two to three years to get a permit for solar because the grid couldn't
handle the amount of solar that was going on there cuz it was so popular.
So then in 2015-16 they ended up letting you do solar but now you have to get a
battery you can't - the NEM stopped. So so Net Energy Metering was
basically went away so you don't get any credit for your solar production now in
fact you're not allowed to send solar back to the grid. You have to have a
battery that takes that solar power. So make sure you check that video and
explains that a lot more. But how do batteries relate to NEM?
Well you have the problem with the grid over the last 10 years is called the
California Duck Curve
And normally you have a normal curve where you know the energy goes up and kind of up and down the lowest point
during the night and then you know the peak would be about 4
to 6 p.m. you know when it in the hot evenings and stuff, well the more and
more solar that's happened every year that gets lower and lower and this is
you know what led to Hawaii's problems. And it's led to the time of use rates in
California, because if the solar production gets to such a level
that you have so much during the day and people aren't using it then you
could have grid damage you know you could have possibly transformers
exploding and all kinds of crazy stuff happening. So utility companies
avoid those problems by limiting solar and actually they went to
time-of-use rates so they're charging about 3 to 400 percent more during
during the peak hours. 4 to 9 p.m. now because that is the problem
with the duck curve that head you know it spikes up solar stops working people
are still using a lot of power so utility companies really have a hard
time ramping that power up super fast to these high levels when the solar was
providing a lot of that power during the day and now isn't. So basically batteries
balance this out. Batteries will store the energy during the day when the solar
is producing power and then power your home at night or in the
evening 4:00 to 9:00 p.m. specifically to lower that peak point and kind
of flatten that duck curve out which is what the utilities want. So batteries are
really kind of a solution to this problem. You do need solar with
batteries solar is required to charge batteries you're not allowed to charge
it from the grid with most utility companies. So you know batteries are kind
made for solar anyway, so you can either get a battery with a solar system
initially or you can add a battery on later to an existing solar system. And
basically what happens is it energy arbitrage. So you can save money
because you're charging your battery when the electricity is kind of at its
low rate so you're you're buying low, you know kind of like stocks, and then you're
selling high when it's at its high rate because you're using that energy for
your house. Instead of paying Edison now you're using that energy and into the
night so you might avoid some of those non-bypassable charges at night to
that you're getting with NEM 2.0 or later so basically the 4-9 p.m.
for example with Edison energy it costs about thirty seven to forty five cents a
kilowatt at the high rates, and then the rest of the day it's around twenty to
twenty four cents a kilowatt so what you're doing is you're your battery will
generally discharge at about 4 p.m. throughout the night all the way to
10 a.m. in the morning depending on how big your battery is how
much power it has and how far it can discharge and stuff. So then in the
morning and you're getting most that time you're getting the you're avoiding
those high rates you know during that time so then in the morning it starts
charging again at 10:00 a.m. up to 4 p.m. so your battery gets kind of fully
charged and early by noon to 2 o'clock depending on how low it had drained and
how big of a solar system you have. And and then it stops charging you know at 3
or 4 o'clock and then we'll go into discharge again. So it repeats
that cycle every day, just saving you more money every day. So you know
basically, you don't have to do quite as much solar now, you can do a
little bit less than you would have to if you didn't have to have a battery. So
you're saving that money and the battery is saving you more money. So generally
the savings on a battery now could be you know 6 to 10 years. It kind of depends
on the utility, how much energy you're using and what you would have had to do
if you didn't have that battery. So you know batteries generally take a little
bit longer than solar to pay for themselves. But you do get the tax credit
on as well. That is also kind of going down at the
over the last few years and ending in a couple years. And then you're saving that
money and also have it available available for backup.
So that's kind of the additional benefit is your comfort and your lifestyle not
only is it kind of paying for itself and able to save money with the battery but
now you have a backup load too, if the power does go out
and you have a little bit more peace of mind to avoid those
issues and have backup power. To power you know whatever you kind of want
♪ Hallelujah! ♪
Depending on your size battery and what battery you get. So yeah that's how it can
save you money. Generally battery systems costs are kind
of variable depending on the size. But the average cost of a battery
system is about eleven two to fourteen thousand dollars installed which is
fairly expensive. But those are generally pretty big battery systems
because that's what you need to power those loads in the evening and overnight.
Then you're getting 30% tax credit. There was a battery rebate
it's kind of on the waitlist. Probably not really available anymore, it
was you know three or four thousand dollars. So your net cost could have been
like four or five thousand dollars now with the tax credit around seven
or eight thousand dollars or so. That money can actually pay back you can
get paid that back pretty quickly. You know six to ten years in a lot of cases
now with Edison and SDG&E and PG&E. Then outside of
California a lot of states don't have Net Energy Metering kind of like Hawaii
now. So your payback is really good in those cases but you're not
sending energy back to the grid from your solar, you're just charging the
battery and avoiding those high costs and keeping your solar power. So that's
how it works if you don't have Net Energy Metering if your battery gets
full you're kind of wasting your solar at that point. It's still going to your
house possibly, but your battery's full but then if your house doesn't need all
that solar power it just doesn't produce any more power
that is being used. So you do waste a little bit of
power, but it's generally better than paying high rates, and not having a
battery where you don't have any power at night now that you're using
from your solar because you don't have a battery or Net Energy Metering to let
your meter to spin backward and store that power. So it can work really good
in those situations. So thanks for watching make sure to check out the
video my intro video about why The Solar Truth is here and we'll
see you next time.