Maximizing Solar ROI: How POSH’s Battery Solutions Help Solar Owners Beat NEM 3.0 and Rising Tariffs
With California’s shift to NEM 3.0, solar customers face new challenges as they now receive credits based on wholesale rates, extending ROI timelines. POSH offers a strategic solution through battery leasing and DC coupling, allowing customers to store excess solar energy, optimize energy use, and avoid the need to switch to NEM 3.0. POSH’s system lets existing NEM 2.0 users expand their solar capacity by up to 20% without exceeding grid backfeed limits, helping mitigate rising tariffs while enhancing self-consumption. This approach allows customers to maximize solar ROI and empowers EPCs to deliver optimized, scalable energy solutions
When the Net Energy Metering (NEM) 3.0 officially became theNet Billing Tariff (NBT) tariff structure went active in 2024, it createdsignificant challenges for potential customers. No longer would customers whoinstalled solar receive the retail rate based on their solar energy production,which would help reduce the time to ROI for their solar installation. Now,customers would receive a credit for solar production that was based on anAvoided Cost Calculator, which mimics the wholesale costs.
This major change in NEM created two major inflections. Oneis that new customers on NBT would require a battery installation to help withenergy arbitrage, improving the ROI of solar installation. The other is thetsunami of signing up customers and existing PV owners who implemented solarunder NEM 2.0 or NEM 1.0 before April 15th of 2023, when all newcustomers would be forced to NBT. In many cases, the solar may not have beenperfectly sized, which left customers frustrated with poor outcomes. The otheraction is the recent regulatory approvals for tariff changes. In this yearalone, business and agricultural tariffs have skyrocketed to between 17-24%from just 2023 and have increased 85-150% in the last three years. These recenttariff increases not only impact recent NEM 2.0 solar installs but also hurtoriginal NEM 1.0 customers. Customers no longer see the value of their originalsolar installs as their planned ROI has evaporated due to the enormous tariffincreases. Customers and EPCs need ways to respond and provide a stronger ROI.POSH can help mitigate this and improve outcomes through DC coupling of solardirectly with a POSH BESS system.
DC couplingrefers to connecting a solar system's solar panels directly to a battery'senergy storage system without using a solar inverter. This can offer increasedefficiency and flexibility for energy management, especially when using abattery for backup power or load shifting. Now,the battery will store the PV when wanted or needed with the assurance ofnon-export generation thanks to POSH’s battery management system. Having thebattery act as the overall management of the back feed for the added DC-coupledsolar panels creates a new opportunity for customers and EPCs. With POSH’s DCcoupling and non-exporting of generation with the existing rules under Rule 21,EPCs can add up to 20% more PV to their existing site. This 20% limit fitswithin the existing Rule 21 guidelines for the California IOUs, which means thecustomer would not need to change from a NEM 2.0 to NEM 3.0, as the back feed tothe grid has not increased thanks to POSH’s DC coupling and energy managementsystem that can optimize for the over-generation of solar into the battery. Thisunique approach allows a customer to take advantage of a POSH battery throughour unique leasing terms or direct procurement to help offset the evening peakhours by storing energy when costs are low and using it when costs are high. Italso allows the customer to increase on-site energy production, which helpsreduce the impact of continued rate increases.
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