Jestersix

PSA: heatwave and pge shutdown

JVU said:
PGE and Tesla have been working on something interesting- Coordinated use of people’s personal Powerwalls (opt-in) to act as a distributed virtual power plant for peak use times when the grid is strained. They‘ve used it a few times, including yesterday around dinner time and another planned for today around then. Hopefully it can help to reduce the number of rolling blackouts we might otherwise experience. Also much better for the environment to draw on stored energy at those times than to have to use the dirtier peaker plants.

But yeah, everyone also needs to have a backup plan.
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I've heard of them doing a program like that, elsewhere where there are major issues with electricity (compared to us), I want to say somewhere in Australia. I just can't imagine there really are that many Powerwalls that it would really make that much of a difference, like how many are needed to offset a city (or hell a region) worth of air conditioners running all at the same time. Also got to say it's odd, initially they say you absolutely can not sell power back via your Powerwall, e.g. "fill it up" when power is cheap, and sell it back at "peak" although that does seem like a perfect usage for them on a large scale, move over distributed computing, we got distributed energy distribution!

That said, part of me would always see that power wall as *MY* lifeline should the power go out, and I wouldn't want let everyone else "mooch" off my preparedness. Plus I know there are a limited number of charge cycles those things have and if I'm charging and discharging fully every day over the "summer" would definitely diminish the lifespan of the device that *I* paid for.
 
I have a generator in box if anyone wants to make me an offer for it. Let me know and I'll get you the model number. I would like it gone.
 
sfsuphysics said:
I've heard of them doing a program like that, elsewhere where there are major issues with electricity (compared to us), I want to say somewhere in Australia. I just can't imagine there really are that many Powerwalls that it would really make that much of a difference, like how many are needed to offset a city (or hell a region) worth of air conditioners running all at the same time. Also got to say it's odd, initially they say you absolutely can not sell power back via your Powerwall, e.g. "fill it up" when power is cheap, and sell it back at "peak" although that does seem like a perfect usage for them on a large scale, move over distributed computing, we got distributed energy distribution!

That said, part of me would always see that power wall as *MY* lifeline should the power go out, and I wouldn't want let everyone else "mooch" off my preparedness. Plus I know there are a limited number of charge cycles those things have and if I'm charging and discharging fully every day over the "summer" would definitely diminish the lifespan of the device that *I* paid for.
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The Tesla/PGE virtual power plan is opt-in. In the latest round it supplied several megawatts to the grid to stabilize during peak use time, similar to a smallish power plant, like the peaker plant they would use as an alternative in this situation.

The current deal is they pay the homeowner $2 per kWh sent to grid during this time, which is like 5x what we get for putting solar back on the grid at peak rates, so a good deal. Though a relatively small total dollar amount per event per user, if this catches on it could eventually pay for the Powerwalls besides all the other advantages.

There are minimum/backup settings so you’ll still have a safety margin. Plus the point of this is to avoid a blackout, not that it would be draining the powerwall during a blackout. A little bit of extra power when the grid is overburdened is the difference between staying on and blackout.

I agree it’s an about-face on their position but I never criticize when an organization changes their mind from a stupid policy to a good one.
 
Coral2Coral said:
Would you mind sharing how much it cost and which company you went with? I got my roof ready and are looking into solar. Thanks.
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I built mine. It’s off grid. No permits. It cost me around 4G. I got lucky and meant a kid that was a solar programmer. He sold me a 25G system for around 3G. I did the install on a ground mount and wiring. It’s super easy. Solar companies are a huge rip off.
If anyone needs help or would like to talk about solar. Just hit me up.
 
phc567 said:
I built mine. It’s off grid. No permits. It cost me around 4G. I got lucky and meant a kid that was a solar programmer. He sold me a 25G system for around 3G. I did the install on a ground mount and wiring. It’s super easy. Solar companies are a huge rip off.
If anyone needs help or would like to talk about solar. Just hit me up.
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Wow! 4G only? That’s a great deal! Will definitely chat with you and learn. Thanks.
 
JVU said:
The Tesla/PGE virtual power plan is opt-in. In the latest round it supplied several megawatts to the grid to stabilize during peak use time, similar to a smallish power plant, like the peaker plant they would use as an alternative in this situation.

The current deal is they pay the homeowner $2 per kWh sent to grid during this time, which is like 5x what we get for putting solar back on the grid at peak rates, so a good deal. Though a relatively small total dollar amount per event per user, if this catches on it could eventually pay for the Powerwalls besides all the other advantages.
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Wow, $2 per kWh? Yikes! Sucks that it'll just get turned around and charged back to customers though, like they couldn't do something similar already?

I mean what is the Powerwall? around 13 kWh or something? Roughly 75 of them is 1 MWh, and there's quite a few more than 75 Powerwall users, so siphoning a little from everyone could definitely work well without adversely affect the end users. But again every time I hear PG&E say "this is the cost to supply power" I want to punch a puppy.
 
Generator is idling and running both tanks at full operation. Thank you prime day! And to the clowns at PG&E, thank you too!
Power was cut pretty much at 4pm on the dot. 94087
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Ok so something failed. I thought you meant they turned it off to conserve. Since you said it happens right at 4, I thought you were told it would be out at 4 or something
 
sfsuphysics said:
Wow, $2 per kWh? Yikes! Sucks that it'll just get turned around and charged back to customers though, like they couldn't do something similar already?

I mean what is the Powerwall? around 13 kWh or something? Roughly 75 of them is 1 MWh, and there's quite a few more than 75 Powerwall users, so siphoning a little from everyone could definitely work well without adversely affect the end users. But again every time I hear PG&E say "this is the cost to supply power" I want to punch a puppy.
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They have been doing these virtual power plants events with opt-in Powerwalls every day since I mentioned it, for 1-3 hours between 5-9p or so depending on when they are most worried. There has been roughly 2000 users contributing around 14 MW or so during the last few events.

Today’s is 6p-9p. I’ve been contributing as much as I can every day but I’m going to opt out for today’s since it is 112F outside and won’t be below 80F until 2a. I need the powerwalls for my own backup for my AC to keep the humans and pets alive.
 
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