The U.S. Energy Information Administration revealed in its monthly Electricity Sector Report that battery adoption by solar customers in California is on the rise.

In October 2023, about 20 percent of solar buyers in California chose to add battery storage systems to their solar systems. in April 2024, that percentage had climbed to more than 50 percent.

This is largely due to California's shift to the Net Energy Metering 3.0 program, a new regulatory structure that reduces the subsidies available to customers who connect solar power directly to the grid. Due to the mismatch between peak solar generation and peak hours of electricity demand, regulators adjusted compensation rates to focus on storing and dispatching solar power during peak hours of electricity use.

A 50 percent or higher battery add-on rate is a significant change for California's solar industry. Solar plus battery systems account for about 9 percent of the state's total installed residential net metering capacity. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, California installed more than 40,000 new systems between October 2023 and April 2024, resulting in 232 MW of new battery storage capacity.

While NEM 3.0 had the desired effect of encouraging the installation of more batteries, the decision to change the rules was not popular with solar proponents. The shift raised the overall sticker price for installing solar; furthermore, while customers get the added benefit of having batteries provide back-up power in the event of an outage, it's taking longer to break even on a solar investment in California. This, in turn, has led to a decline in installed capacity, bringing the first quarter of 2024 to its lowest quarterly level since 2021, at just over 300 MW.

Currently, California has more than 12,000 MW of installed solar capacity in residential net metering systems sized under 1 MW. Residential installations account for more than 70 percent of installed net metering capacity, which equates to roughly one-third of the state's total installed solar capacity.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration said, “Our data show that 83,376 new residential net metering PV systems were installed in the third quarter of 2023, compared to 70,152 systems connected to the grid under the old NEM 2.0 rules during the same period in 2022. However, we are unable to distinguish which of these are systems subject to NEM 2.0.”

Another 46,631 new systems were installed in the first quarter of 2024. Since January 2022, an average of 21,000 new solar systems have been added each month.

Source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/BL4lUzCnvnxQYCxMPqZdlg