Comment by akoboldfrying | Hacker News Reader

Comment by akoboldfrying | Hacker News Reader

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I don't see the terms as exploitative.

IIUC, the benefit for the customer is a battery backup that is much cheaper than buying the batteries themselves would be, plus the ability to make money when their battery is taken over for a few hours during occasional peak usage events. Provided the former override the latter, as seems to be the case, I don't see what the issue is.

I think you're claiming that battery backup shouldn't be needed in the first place if the power company was doing their job properly, since then there wouldn't be frequent outages in the first place. But I gather that this just isn't practical in rural Vermont. To put it another way: In that environment, a power company guaranteeing 99.999% uptime could not offer this at a price that is acceptable to most customers. So the equilibrium naturally shifts towards citizens tolerating more frequent outages than would be tolerated in, say, central NYC, and/or paying for mitigations like generators or batteries.

> IIUC, the benefit for the customer is a battery backup that is much cheaper than buying the batteries themselves would be, plus the ability to make money when their battery is taken over for a few hours during occasional peak usage events. Provided the former override the latter, as seems to be the case, I don't see what the issue is.

They don't get a battery backup. The utility company gets a battery backup and the customer pays a large percentage of that cost. The utility company isn't obligated to let the consumer who paid for part of that battery draw power from it, ever. They explicitly state that all the energy it stores is theirs, and that they can drain all of it away any time they want to.

Customers are being contractually obligated to shell out thousands of dollars, over a 10 year commitment they're punished for backing out of, obligated to not hold the utility company responsible for any damage they cause, obligated to take on a bunch of liability for things they have no control over, obligated to allow the company access to their property, obligated to allow the company access to use their internet service free of charge, and for all of that the utility company isn't obligated to do anything but install the company's equipment on the customer's property

All the customer gets is that maybe they'll be paid for the power the company takes from the battery (the company doesn't have to pay anything) and to maybe get to draw power from it if there's a service outage (the company isn't obligated to let them use any of it).

There are customers who say they are being paid for that energy and they have been able to use the power to avoid outages, and that's great, but that can change at any time and for any reason because the terms they agreed to don't obligate the utility to do either of those things. The terms explicitly say that all of the energy in the battery belongs to the utility company and they can use it however they see fit.

Maybe this utility company is the nicest company in the world. Maybe the utility company today would volunteer out of the kindness of their heart to rebuild someone's house if a software update causes the battery to catch fire and the customer's home burned to the ground along with everything in it, but the terms say they wouldn't have to do that and couldn't be made to. Maybe the company would never ever stop paying customers for the energy they take, or leave the customer without power while they drain the full battery to help restore service for businesses or wealthier customers. The terms would let them do those things though.

You shouldn't pay out thousands of dollars, take on a list of obligations, and expose yourself to huge risks and liabilities and then still be forced to just hope that the company will do the right thing, and keep doing the right thing for the next decade of your life. That's the problem.

I've now read the GMP terms on their website, and I've moved closer to your position.

> They don't get a battery backup.

The customer in effect gets a "probabilistic" battery backup -- whatever is in the battery at outage time. As you say, the terms (para. 15) explicitly allow that GMP can use the entire battery at any time; it seems I was confusing those terms with different ones ("at most 36 times per year") mentioned by another commenter, which were actually for a different company, in NC. This is not as good as a battery that you fully control, and it would have been nice to see GMP place limits on its usage level in the terms, but it's much better than nothing, as made clear by commenter xoa and the customers interviewed in TFA. GMP wants high total charge levels in customer batteries, so their incentives are aligned with customers; the only potential misalignment I see is that it may not matter to GMP how that charge is distributed across customer batteries (to them, everyone at 50% charge may look identical to 50% of customers at full charge and 50% empty, but the former is much better from customers' perspective), but I also can't think of any reason why GMP would benefit from an unbalanced charge distribution, and maintaining rough balance seems straightforward, so I don't think that would be a conflict in practice.

> maybe get to draw power from it if there's a service outage (the company isn't obligated to let them use any of it).

This is simply wrong. Para. 15 explicitly obligates GMP to permit this:

> As Lessee, Customer’s control over the Energy Storage System is limited to its usage as a backup power source in the event of a power outage up to the point that the battery is completely depleted.

Outages are obviously "bidirectional", so there's no conceivable way for GMP to draw on the battery in the event of one anyway!

I didn't see any mention of net metering or payment for exporting electricity back out to the grid, which surprised me. Without such an agreement in writing, it seems unlikely that GMP would ever pay for this access, so I agree with you there.

The internet usage clause is reasonable and common sense, IMO. I suppose it would be better to include an upper limit to make sure that it isn't hogging the connection, but it would be my very last concern.

The only clause that I really disliked was para. 20, clearing them of any liability for damages caused by the battery.

> Para. 15 explicitly obligates GMP to permit this: As Lessee, Customer’s control over the Energy Storage System is limited to its usage as a backup power source in the event of a power outage up to the point that the battery is completely depleted

That doesn't bind GMP, it binds the customer. It simply limits their control over the battery to a specific use under a specific circumstance. I suspect that GMP will often be left without the ability to stop users from using their battery as a backup in the event of a power outage (depending on the nature of the outage) but they make it clear that when they can, they are entitled to by adding:

"GMP shall have the ability to continuously utilize the Energy Storage System at its sole discretion for the Term and has the right to use all the energy in the battery."

It does state that the system they install will have "whole- home backup power capability" and the program description includes the line "The Energy Storage System can [note CAN and not WILL] provide Customer with whole-home backup power during a Grid outage."

I think there's a fair expectation that at least some of the time the battery will work to supply whole-home backup power when there's an outage. They were pretty careful to pepper in enough weasel words throughout to keep their options open when they have options at all though. Like you said, outages can be "bidirectional". A cut cable isn't going let stored power out any more than it lets the power in.

The biggest concern I can see is power being shifted to keep the lights on for specific customers while leaving others with power-filled batteries in the dark or draining faster. We already see a lot of inequalities with how power companies treat people. Wealthier neighborhoods are often less likely to experience outages, get their power restored sooner, are more likely to get upgrades/maintenance, etc. Having these batteries in people's homes, especially those farther out from critical infrastructure (which usually gets top priority from utility companies) can actually help with that, but only if the utility company plays fair. It'd be nice to see something explicit that would give priority to the energy stored in the battery to the homeowner who helped pay for it in times of need.

> The internet usage clause is reasonable and common sense, IMO. I suppose it would be better to include an upper limit to make sure that it isn't hogging the connection, but it would be my very last concern.

I'm glad that reportedly the bandwidth usage isn't heavy at least. It'd be nice if they segmented off the device for customers when they installed the service. Not many users will be able to isolate their home network from the utility's equipment. I could see these batteries being a good target for hackers to get a foothold into a person's network and I've seen examples where companies use their access to a person's home network as a way to collect more consumer data through scans.

I'm also curious to know whats in the privacy policy they won't show you until after they show up to install the device.

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