OT: silicon valley clean energy

d0ughb0y

Active member
off topic post.

just want to get feedback from folks who switched to silicon valley clean energy from pge. are they ok? or do you wish you had opted out and stayed with pge?

I know they claim your monthly bill will be like $1 or $2 less than pge for the next two years, and no guarantees after that.

I remember a while back seeing in local news angry sunnyvale (I think) residents when they force switched them to SVCE.

There is very limited info on them. I'm thinking of opting out now, since it is easier to opt in later than to opt out later. milpitas is just about to get force switched.

I read if you switch to SVCE, pge assesses a penalty. If you switch to solar (in effect you are also not buying from pge), you don't get the penalty (right?).
 
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Dunno about SVCE, but PGE does penalise somehow if you go solar; there is still the "minimum" charge and the net metering based on time of production and time of use.

Cant be fully offgrid and in fremont (unless we got BS'ed) you cannot store power directly from solar.. any battery storage can only be hooked up to the PGE breaker box. Our company declined to provide a solar inverter that has battery hookups. what this means is in case of power outage even though the panels are producing the juice is going nowhere.

Overall not too bad after going solar...not as much savings.. in the sense we factored ROI to be about 8.5-9.5 years. but after seeing two annual NEM bills now its more like 11-12 years
 
Dunno about SVCE, but PGE does penalise somehow if you go solar; there is still the "minimum" charge and the net metering based on time of production and time of use.

Cant be fully offgrid and in fremont (unless we got BS'ed) you cannot store power directly from solar.. any battery storage can only be hooked up to the PGE breaker box. Our company declined to provide a solar inverter that has battery hookups. what this means is in case of power outage even though the panels are producing the juice is going nowhere.

Overall not too bad after going solar...not as much savings.. in the sense we factored ROI to be about 8.5-9.5 years. but after seeing two annual NEM bills now its more like 11-12 years

That's hardly a penalty and entirely fair. There's a lot of maintenance and upkeep required to maintain the grid, so the $14 is quite fair. I'm on the E6 tier so also have time of use rate, which is far far more generous to solar users in that we're effectively paid 3x a rate for any electricity generate during the 12-6 peak hours and pay the significantly lower rate for the off-peak hours when people are generally home.
Several companies do allow you to hook up battery packs to your panels, namely Solar City. And in case of power outages no, your panels are not producing. That's a safety requirement for all panels connected to a grid - they need to shut down any feed back to the grid for obvious safety reasons. We can't have random workers electrocuting themselves. Lastly, if you managed to have access to some degree of electricity during outages you should have opted for a standard string-inverter. SMA includes an outlet to allow usage directly from the panels even during outages, feeding solely to it and not the grid.
 
That's hardly a penalty and entirely fair. There's a lot of maintenance and upkeep required to maintain the grid, so the $14 is quite fair. I'm on the E6 tier so also have time of use rate, which is far far more generous to solar users in that we're effectively paid 3x a rate for any electricity generate during the 12-6 peak hours and pay the significantly lower rate for the off-peak hours when people are generally home.
Several companies do allow you to hook up battery packs to your panels, namely Solar City. And in case of power outages no, your panels are not producing. That's a safety requirement for all panels connected to a grid - they need to shut down any feed back to the grid for obvious safety reasons. We can't have random workers electrocuting themselves. Lastly, if you managed to have access to some degree of electricity during outages you should have opted for a standard string-inverter. SMA includes an outlet to allow usage directly from the panels even during outages, feeding solely to it and not the grid.

agree with everything you mention, except - in case of power outages the panels are producing but for the safety reason that you mentioned the circuit disconnects the panels from the grid and therefore the home.

We did ask for an inverter that will allow access to power directly from the solar inverter.. but were told PGE and City regulations do not allow that. maybe just stories we were told :headwally: maybe there is still hope.. the solar edge inverter seems to have the option to hookupto something....

"penalise" is relative... to me its perfectly OK what Pge is charging and know that such costs will increase for many reasons. I was just contrasting that with peoples expectations.
 
anyone in south bay using Silicon Valley Clean Energy as electricity supplier?
did everyone opt out and stayed with PGE?
 
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