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Comment by greggsy | Hacker News Reader

> They make your battery charge to full capacity in advance of the event..

> We've paired our batteries with solar panels..

Does this imply that the scheme will charge your battery from the grid, and that you don't technically even need solar?

I've never considered that one might get a battery without solar, but I guess you might have some power needs that would make it worthwhile to draw on during cheap periods and drain at peak?

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Solar is very popular in Australia, to the point that we have too much surplus during the day. So now we often have effectively free energy late morning to early afternoon. So while not common, some people here do get batteries despite having no solar, to store the excess from the grid for when it’s more expensive later.

Reading this is the first time in a long while that I've thought, "Man, I love this. Living in the future is awesome."

We're in the GMP program from TFA. We don't have solar (it's on the list of longer-term projects). GMP is using the batteries solely to time-shift the load by charging from the grid during periods of low demand and drawing during periods of high demand. It decreases their (and indirectly their customers') costs because peak-rate power is expensive to buy or generate.

Does GMP have a community solar program or something similar where you can group buy solar?

https://solarunitedneighbors.org/co-ops/ is a resource in this context, https://www.brightsaver.org/ for balcony solar (Balcony solar is legal in Vermont via https://legislature.vermont.gov/bill/status/2026/S.202).

(seems like it would make sense for GMP to deploy batteries everywhere commercially logical first wave, and then follow with distributed solar generation across their service territory: https://greenmountainpower.com/map/service-area/)

Correct, solar not needed. Depending on your battery capacity and usage patterns you could enroll in one of the plans that lets you pay cheaper rates off-peak to charge your batteries from the grid, and then power your house off the batteries during peak times. Some places this makes a lot of sense - the spread here (between off-peak, flat rate, and peak) is not favorable enough to make it interesting though, as far as I can tell.

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