I’m in a similar setup where I live in Australia. Our house has solar and battery — unlike the people in the FA, we purchased it directly ourselves, although with a significant government rebate.
Our battery is under automatic VPP control, but it’s not like it randomly starts exporting when we don’t want it to. When regional demand is high (hot days) or supply is low (no wind or cloudy), our battery might start exporting. But that’s a good thing for us, because our electricity is priced wholesale and changes every 5 minutes, and export rates are high in this situation. A couple of times there have been price spikes and we’ve made a few hundred dollars in under a hour. It’s a win-win for us (making money) and the grid (providing stability). To be fair, those spikes are rarer now than they were a year ago.
You can always control the battery if you want. Sometimes I’ll manually export even if prices aren’t high if I know I don’t need the power in my battery. Sometimes I’ll prevent export if I know I want to charge the car overnight from the battery. But mostly I let it do its thing.
From an investment perspective, the battery has been a no-brainer. Even without the windfalls from price spikes, being able to defer grid consumption to daylight hours (when wholesale prices are very cheap or even negative, i.e. we get paid to charge the car) puts the ROI in the 3-5 year range.
nonfamous · · focus · HN ↗
Our battery is under automatic VPP control, but it’s not like it randomly starts exporting when we don’t want it to. When regional demand is high (hot days) or supply is low (no wind or cloudy), our battery might start exporting. But that’s a good thing for us, because our electricity is priced wholesale and changes every 5 minutes, and export rates are high in this situation. A couple of times there have been price spikes and we’ve made a few hundred dollars in under a hour. It’s a win-win for us (making money) and the grid (providing stability). To be fair, those spikes are rarer now than they were a year ago.
You can always control the battery if you want. Sometimes I’ll manually export even if prices aren’t high if I know I don’t need the power in my battery. Sometimes I’ll prevent export if I know I want to charge the car overnight from the battery. But mostly I let it do its thing.
From an investment perspective, the battery has been a no-brainer. Even without the windfalls from price spikes, being able to defer grid consumption to daylight hours (when wholesale prices are very cheap or even negative, i.e. we get paid to charge the car) puts the ROI in the 3-5 year range.
hermitShell · · focus · HN ↗
Where I live in Canada, it's extremely unclear whether anyone is making their ROI on solar installations.