Cracking the Solar NEM 3 Code - Make CA Utilities pay you Thousands! 

Very clear and concise. Definitely sucks people take your data and don't give the credit you deserve. Thank you for going through all that research and data crunching and sharing your findings. I was seriously considering solar but with NEM 3 I pretty much gave up but you restored some faith lol.

The answer is to dump 30 to 40K into storage batteries, pay 30% interest on them for ten years, then replace them. You do all this knowing full well that any edge you may come up with, the alleged professional bureaucrats will legislate away from you in the near future. Sounds like a swell idea.

"Cracking the code to NEM3!!" Spend $50,000 buying numerous batteries. Got it. 11:45 seems to make the video irrelevant at that point. Is it just a commercial/advertisement at that point?

FACT - NEM 3.0 sucks big time. Glad I got in on NEM 2.0 before the cut-off date.

Thousands payback?? Easier said than done. Your battery will support your energy usage when the sun is down unless you have some large batteries. But the battery costs a lot of money and increase your payback time! The only way is to overturn the NEM 3.0 or increase the export credit or extend NEM 2.0 for another year. The lawsuit against NEM 3.0 is ongoing. The 5 utility commissioners who voted for NEM 3.0 must/may already have secured NEM 2.0 for themselves and they want you to get NEM 3.0! That should be the main concern.

Appreciate your time and diligence putting this video and sharing your data …keep it up !

I found this video going back & forth all over but; I understand the premise. I currently have a solar system (installed 22 years ago) coupled with a Powerwall (installed last mont --qualified under NEM2) PLUS two Ev's. Needless to say, I have been a solar advocate for a long time. We are a PG&E customer. I have considered going off-grid since it wouldn't take a lot more to be able to make that work. Using NEM (NEB) to get a check from the utilities would be great! Good for you presenting the methodology.

Under 3.0 the biggest savings answer might actually be PPA. If you drive an all electric vehicle, you’re never going to have a net income on power, even with triple capacity batteries. PHEVs with 20kWh may still come out in the black. But NEM3.0 ’s goal was to favor the solar corporations under the guise of helping the small business owner.

Any change you can publish a link to the PG@E buyback rates.?

Awesome! We will definitely do. My interim plan would be small panel array to run the swamp cooler with small battery to run it a few hours into datkmess and power a lighting circuit so the lights stay on. Less than $2k for that, if i cant export to grid. You have restored my hope since missing the boat on nem2. Thank you!

I’m trying to get out of a VPP. Do you recommend it for ultimate savings?

I thought it is not allowed to export to the grid from a battery - only from the PV array. Is this wrong?

I need help calculating my customer usage including battery, can you help me

Would love some training about this

Hey there. How do I get in contact with you to do an evaluation on the system? I’m thinking of installing in my house.

Looking at your excel spreadsheet sheet your math is I believe is flawed. Your assumption is that you would export 100% of the battery kWh capacity in the two peak hours of high payback. Unless your using grid power between 4-6 and then Energy dumping your battery will never be at 100% full capacity at 6-8pm. Also your bidirectional charging scenario is highly very flawed. When are you charging the car? Not from the battery at night as the kWh capacity of a Solar ESS system is tiny in comparison to an EV. So if you were to charge your EV from the grid you cannot export grid power back to the grid from a Solar battery or EV car. The only Power that can be exported is Solar Energy. So unless you work from home & charge your car during the day from excess generation above what the solar system produces this is not allowed per NEM 3.0 guidelines. I like your points but your math is flawed as well as your assumptions regarding what is actually allowed under each of the 3 IOU'S in California Also one last point when you have oversized batteries, you need to also oversize your solar system or else you will not have the ability to fully charge your battery. To have the correct analysis you will need to overlay a customer's interval data. You will see here in California HVAC usage will have already drawn down the Battery in the 2 hours before the Power hours & also the load during the Power Hours. So customer consumption load profile play a much bigger role in the battery export values credits you get in your bill. I think you have the right idea on some points but are I bleive you have over overvalued your battery export credit in your analysis of an averge home that consumes roughly 12,000 kWh annually the a 2 Tesla Power system will end up with around just over 1000 dollars a year in credit. All in all nice video though.

Hey, I know this video is a few months old, I have NEM 1 and just got a Tesla. What are your thoughts, or do you have a video on that? Thanks Erwin

Thanks for shouting out our article!

Can this strategy be used with NEM 2.0 I may have misunderstood the video but with EV’s getting cheaper it seems like even with NEM 2.0 an EV may pay for itself instead of having to buy a battery system and also being able to do zero out my consumption during peak hours.

Very nice video - one of your main points: are you are saying we can select the time period we can sell our stored energy from battery? I guess i just want to clarify: We can sell back to the grid when they pay higher rates? How do we program for power to be sold at a certain time?

It was difficult to follow this video. I think you are saying if I had a bi-directional EV vehicle (Ford Ev truck) that has a 130 kWh battery, then I could charge the battery using my home solar panels and then send the 130 kWh back to the grid in September between 8-10pm. I would be paid back ~$2.7/kwh for each of 30 days in September. This is 130 x $2.7 x 30 = $10,530 for the month of September.

I wanted to pay cash for a solar system but with this NEM 3.0 it's not worth it in my view. I will never own a EV so that's not another drain. But with a battery it's $25K. A neighbor who has the battery system still told me she pays $500 at the end of the year to SCE. So I pay SCE around $1800 a year so I don't see it.

Best is if PGE goes bankrupt and reset older agreements otherwise it is the current customers subsidizing all those old solar users