#batteryarbitrage — Public Fediverse posts

Had watched a video about Base Power. Currently they're only available in Texas. Thought I'd see if there was money to be saved with Dominion's net metering plan — with or without #BatteryArbitrage.

We don't have a battery as they've always been too expensive to justify based on just "what if we lose power long enough for our refrigerators to let food go bad".

I have a small #solar array. During peak months, it generates a bit over 500kWh/mo.

In the 11mo we've had our #EV, we've mostly stayed between 150-185kWh/mo.

Eyeballing Dominion's variable rate option, it didn't look like there were savings to be had. It looked especially iffy given that my I'm #WorkFromHome and wife has a medical condition that has left her stay-at-home.

Still, it didn't seem to make sense that my eyeball estimate could be correct. So, I ran our usage patterns through a calculator (Dominion and NREL both have online tools). And, my eyeballs weren't all that far off, even with #battery #arbitrage. While there were some savings that could be had, they'd be all but eaten up by the all-in costs of a battery versus the effective lifetime of that battery.

It begs the question of why Dominion even offers a variable rate plan. I mean, I get that our usage patterns aren't typical. But it looks like, even if they were, it wouldn't matter. Dominion's iffy variable rate plan looks specifically designed to destroy any savings one would get with a solar+battery setup (especially if you don't have a "100% of average daily use" solar and battery system). This seems borderline criminal.