I barely followed any of that Dom
Do you have to go into PSEG and manually move credits generated from your solar panels around to offset your over night charging? They don't just automatically adjust it for you?
Also do you have a home storage battery?
Sorry, I wasn't very clear and it is a little bit complicated.
Assume you have two time rates, peak and off peak (just to make it easier). You can only generate excess credits during peak, but rates are cheaper in off peak. The system lets you exchange your peak to off peak at 2-1. If you know you won't generate enough electric to cover a 100% of your use, you have an incentive to switch credits to the offpeak time and charge what you can then.
If you have an EV and follow typical charging practices, then you charge at night when you will never generate.
So, I didn't reallze all of this even when they explained it to me; I only figured it out after speaking to them, seeing the different credits on my bill, and then going to the transfer form (they were also wrong, saying it was a 1-1 transfer but you actually get a good transfer rate, as good as 4-1 for 3-7 pm). Now that there is a lot of sun, I have banked a lot of credits, and have transferred like 1.5 months worth of evening use (car charging) to the evening credit bank - - 500 kWh to 1,000 after the 2:1 multiplier.
So, while I won't be able to optimize until the first year is over and I know how I charge and use with solar, it is plausible that while i calculated I would still have like 17% of my original bill because of Rivian charging, the arbitrage may let me get it down to 0. But, I had to burn like 3 months 100 utility bills to generate credits to move to the night. So, not super simple. Note that 100 pretty much corresponds to 1 month of driving the rivian pro rata 12,000 miles or so a year.
* * * * *
Answering your questions: 1) Yes, I have to have PSEG manually move it. I actually have to email them a handsigned piece of paper telling them which type of credit to move where (there is a actually another time period, 3-7 pm, that is 4-1). I appreciate them having this rate, but it is way too manual. It seems utilities are incremental and not leaders in innovation. But I have to say customer service, even when wrong, has been pretty cool about things.
2). Yes I have a battery. But only one. That would allow me to pretty much go indefinitely between solar and storage BUT for amperage reasons (they say) you can't use a level 2 charger when you only have one battery AND are off grid. That is fine by me, I knew that when I got the system. A second battery would have been like 8000 after taxes and credits so not justifiable (this was during peak inflation pricing. Once a month or so I run my battery down significantly just to maintain battery health.
