We're in the home stretch of summer, which means your solar panels should be producing more energy now than at almost any other time of the year. As the season begins to wind down, you'll notice your system's daily energy production gradually starting to decrease. This is a normal seasonal change as we head into autumn, when daylight hours become shorter and the sun sits lower in the sky, resulting in less solar energy reaching your panels.
For now, batteries tend to get full earlier in the day, utility meters spin backwards more, and solar panels are mostly cloud free, so you’re either banking a lot of credits with the utility or filling up your batteries to cruise through the night.
If you are a PG&E customer, keep in mind that their summer rates are still in effect, which means not only are rates higher than the rest of the year, but the difference between peak rates and off peak rates can be staggering.
For example, for most of the year the price difference between PG&E’s peak and off peak residential power use is around 3 cents/kWh. However, during PG&E’s four “summer” months, peak power rates skyrocket, priced at 22 cents/kWh higher than off peak rates.
For most PG&E homes, peak hours are from 4-9 pm every day of the year, but that’s not always the case.
Call the PG&E Solar Hotline at (877) 743-4112 and ask what rate plan you’re on, as peak hours can differ based on rate plan, and some early adopter solar homes are still on rate plans that don’t even have peak hours.
Pro Tip: Try to minimize power use during summer peak hours for maximum bill savings, and consider adding batteries that can help avoid evening power use altogether, as they run your home at night and get recharged from solar during the day.
CTA: Learn More at our Monthly Solar Salon https://www.cal-solar.coop/sunlight-to-socket-event
A backup battery is one of the smartest investments you can make in your home's energy future. Whether or not you have solar, back up batteries have multiple benefits and can pay for themselves within a few years. Let's check out the benefits:
- Keeping your home powered during an outage: Depending on how much power you use, how many batteries you have, and whether or not you have solar, they could keep your home powered for days on end. This helps save groceries and other perishables and can reduce or eliminate the need to run a generator, which can be expensive to fuel.
- Reducing expensive evening utility costs: Home batteries can help you avoid paying expensive evening peak utility prices if you are on a Time-of-Use rate plan like most PG&E residential customers. Even homes without solar can save hundreds of dollars a year by using battery power during peak hours and refilling them later that night with cheaper off-peak power.
- Earning money through Virtual Power Plants: There is also the ability to make money by sharing some of your battery power for an hour or two during heat wave events. This is called being part of a Virtual Power Plant, and it not only helps the grid and the environment by avoiding the use of expensive and polluting “peaker” power plants, but it can also earn you hundreds of dollars per year on top of your utility bill savings.
- Protecting your long-term solar savings: For those of you early adopters who are still on NEM1 or NEM2 and are coming up against the end of your 20-year interconnection agreements with PG&E, batteries can help you avoid the surprise of suddenly being moved onto NEM 3 rules and having your True-up bills go through the roof.
CTA: Battery Info: https://www.cal-solar.coop/battery-storage
