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Comment by crackercrews | Hacker News Reader

I hear it is 2x to 3x that much depending on time of day in Santa Clara. Also, people built solar when there were different rules. The new rules make it much less advantageous.

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> I hear it is 2x to 3x that much depending on time of day in Santa Clara.

Sounds like an amazing opportunity to make bank trading energy off-hours (as modeled by TX). Guess what technology enables exactly this!

Batteries charged by natural gas?

That's right, batteries! They enable us to capitalize on energy price fluctuations.

You can of course charge them however you like, but I have a feeling Santa Clara's purported 3x price fluctuations are not due entirely to natural gas.

No. If you get the time of use plan in Santa Clara it's 4 cents more on-peak vs. off-peak [1]. The situation with PG&E's rates is completely asinine and is a political failure more than anything else.

[1] https://www.siliconvalleypower.com/home/showpublisheddocumen...

What's the point of a time of use plan if it only varies 4 cents? Does that change behavior?

Well, it's a 25% discount, it just doesn't sound like much because PG&E's rates are so insane.

You’re probably hearing that from people who are in Santa Clara but somehow served by PG&E rather than Silicon Valley Power (the municipal utility). Maybe they are right on the city boundary, or they live in some other city in Santa Clara County (SVP only serves the city of Santa Clara). PG&E off-peak rates for Silicon Valley are 40-60 cents/kWh.

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