If PV ever becomes a serious thing, the utilities are going to have to take control of who is allowed to generate electricity into the grid and when, just as they can for all other providers. A lot of people are not going to like when the utility turns their power off but takes the juice their PV system is generating.
It doesn't matter if you agree or not; if you are going to have a PV system connected to the grid you have to conform to the rules of the AHJ.
Actually it isn't AE's rules that dictate that PV has to be on a completely separate service; that's another AHJ in a nearby area. But anyway, as far as I know in that jurisdiction a battery backup system and a PV system cannot touch the same service conductors. There is one caveat, however; those rules are for residential systems and I have been strictly commercial (cue Frank Zappa) for the past three years or so, so the rules and regs for that AHJ could have changed. For AE, though, the rules are currently as I have described them.
We're not talking about an hour, and we're not talking about a market value for having power in a long outage. We're talking about the 'public saftey power shutdowns' around here that can last days in fire season. We're talking perhaps about post hurricane scenarios in other parts of the country, having power and not needing gas.
In AE's system you do indeed pay the utility for energy you consume that you produce, but the utility buys the energy you and everyone else produces at what they consider a fair market value. The fact that everyone receives the same return on their investment, dollar and Watt, is what they consider to be fair.
This should be dealt with via appropriate time of use schedules, again applicable to everyone not just solar owners.
Of course the calculation is different for different situations, but for the typical urban resident with a dependable grid the numbers do not usually come out that way. For me, the Snowpocalypse last February was an outlier; for the 10-15 years prior to that the grid had been down for maybe 3-4 hours total. Again, for me and for most other citizens of Austin, a battery backup system doesn't make much sense economically, and the PV contribution to my bottom line were it to run during outages would be way way down in the noise.
Lol
On that we agree.
The customers I mentioned are in typical suburban areas. And it's not the grid per se that isn't dependable around here, it's the distribution wires.
The OP is talking about a cord and plug connected zero export system, probably less than 1kw, AHJ usually is not concerned with such things.
I agree that the calculus is different for every customer.
Yeah but realistically you can get close enough with an MID that connects only when batteries need to charge from grid. Not 'zero chance' because more dependent on controls. But doable.
Knees, eyes, ears ...
But you meant the solar generation system. I have a microinverter system with Enphase 215s. It's been 7.5 years now, and the only problem I've had is the vacuum cleaner knocking the Cat5 out of the internet connection. Obviously to me, the long warrantee is a joke since it is hardware only and getting someone up there to replace something is far more $$ than it would be worth. Zero maintenance SO FAR. There is no practical way to wash them if they needed it.This is why GFID are not listed for back feed. They may be damaged if they operate with power applied to the load side. That damage may still allow the device to be reset. The GFID electronics may no longer be functioning and open the circuit on a low current ground fault.
Of course, I am just stating my views on the topic.
