Any suggestions on managing PG&E bill?

[rygh]

Note that almost all LEDs and DC pumps run off 12V or 24V DC. Usually 24V.
You don't need a real inverter. Although you may want a DC-DC converter for a clean voltage.

It would not be that hard to set up a system to charge a battery at night, and be used for lights/etc during the day.
The thing is .... I bet it would take quite a while to make up the cost.
An LiFePo4 battery (the safe ones) is about $600-$1000 per 100Ah at 12V. (1.2 Kwh)
My calculations are about 13 Kqh/day, so I would need 10 of them.
And you don't get FREE power, you just get slightly cheaper power due to time of day.

So I would say get solar for the house first, then do special things like that.

STEP 1 : Measure power and build a spreadsheet. This is from 2017, but probably still about right.

 

[JVU]

Yeah what PG&E does should be criminal. Complain about too much power demand during the day, and too little at night, but a solution presents itself with you buying up some of that cheap relatively "unused" power they make at night so you can stay off the daytime power when they have "too much demand" and they're like "nope... you can't do that". The reality is you "could" do that, but I think Tesla and other battery manufacturers have to put in certain software locks to prevent the user from doing it so that they can comply with local codes and what not.

I can confirm that Tesla would be fine to allow us to charge from the grid whenever we want and use PW battery power whenever we want. The tech and software is already built in for use in less regulated areas. The reason we can’t is because it would go against a PGE rule, and since the PW is tied to the grid, it has to abide by PGE rules. I’m somewhat hopeful PGE will see allowing this would be in their own best interest at some point, but I’ve been hoping that for a few years already.

The non-grid-tied battery systems others have mentioned could work this way, but the PITA factor makes them not worth it for daily cycling.

 

[nly04]

Look like the only different is heater for winter and chiller for summer, everything else is the same for all year round. So set temp to 76-77 on winter and 79-80 on summer, make more manifold to run other equipments as possible. If you still on this hobby you have to leave with other cost. For my tank, at the moment, I have 3 led lights, 2 mp40, 1 return pump, 1 skimmer, 2 heater and calcium reactor (circulation pump, electronic doser and peristaltic pump), this alone cost me $20-$30/month for my 150gal tank.

 

[primaz]

I might be old school and still using a canopy top but the advantage of placing the LED's say around 1.25" above the tank is the amount of watts you need to penetrate a deep tank is not that much but yes the spread might require more lights depending on your tank size but if they are lower power or tuned down then the watts you run for lights might be a lot lower? I am running my 3 NICREW LED's 1.25" off the top of the tank and had to lower them to 40% because they were too powerful; I could have used lower power LED's knowing what I know now, but instead I have them tuned way down.