High Tide Aquatics

Outaged proofed! :D

I think it was a very limited time thing in the early days of home batteries. I signed up for it on the first day it was available, had to wait a year for the rebate, and eventually barely got the full rebate before the money for that tier was used up. They did have other lower tiers, but I think they went quickly too.

I learned about it from Tesla and PGE, so I’d suggest contacting either of them to see what if anything is still available.

For a quick soap-box moment, I think it really is in PGE’s best interest both financially and from a grid stability point of view to subsidize having more residential battery systems that can smooth/reduce peak loads, like mine does for them.
 
JVU said:
I think it was a very limited time thing in the early days of home batteries. I signed up for it on the first day it was available, had to wait a year for the rebate, and eventually barely got the full rebate before the money for that tier was used up. They did have other lower tiers, but I think they went quickly too.

I learned about it from Tesla and PGE, so I’d suggest contacting either of them to see what if anything is still available.

For a quick soap-box moment, I think it really is in PGE’s best interest both financially and from a grid stability point of view to subsidize having more residential battery systems that can smooth/reduce peak loads, like mine does for them.
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Thanks for the info. I agree with your soap-box moment. And it sure doesn’t hurt having emergency power for the reef while helping the grid!
 
JVU said:
If you have solar and power walls, PGE rules say that you can only charge them from solar, except in well-defined emergency-type situations (“Storm Watch”). Apparently they don’t want you charging up at night when electricity is cheap and discharging to the grid in the afternoon when it is expensive. They should allow this though, because it would help them cover these times of greater need, and reduce their reliance on expensive and polluting peaker-plants.
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It's not so much about helping them, i agree it would, it's because they don't want someone on a ToU schedule buying cheap power, then selling it back for a premium later and actually making money off PG&E.

Things got complicated with ToU which was PG&E's way to charge you more for electricity because they damn well know people are not going to radically change their habits, but PG&E also needs to buy your power at the cost that they sell to you, where as other states have much more fierce power companies that will only pay you a fraction of the cost of power, so you're basically can't use them as a battery.
 
Are you able to use solar directly when the grid is down with a powerwall or do you need to go Solar->Powerwall->house? I'm asking because solar panels usually need the grid to sync the 60hz frequency. Obviously the battery has its own sine wave generator but I'm curious if you can use the powerwall inverter straight from solar without the grid.
 
EasyBay Newbie said:
Are you able to use solar directly when the grid is down with a powerwall or do you need to go Solar->Powerwall->house? I'm asking because solar panels usually need the grid to sync the 60hz frequency. Obviously the battery has its own sine wave generator but I'm curious if you can use the powerwall inverter straight from solar without the grid.
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I don’t know enough about the hardware/wiring/electrical to know exactly how everything is set up. But I do know that when the grid is down, everything else works well, ie the solar panels are still powering the house and charging the batteries, the batteries are still powering the house if there isn’t enough solar coming in, etc.
 
I have the SolarEdge inverter with my system so everything should work seamlessly without the grid. I believe the system is also optimized between drawing from solar vs battery.

Here's the diagram of how things connect..

upload_2019-3-22_11-45-7.png
 
rygh said:
Hmm, I have the same type of inverter. Probably different model though.
I did not know it had a separate backed up load and battery control built in.
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There are two models... the short inverter is not battery ready while the longer version (pictured) is. If your inverter is about 12 - 18 inches, it's the non-battery ready one.
 
That's cool, I remember when the microinverters first came out you had to pay to be able to monitor how much power your panels are putting out, or you could just not pay but then you don't get any info.
 
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