Texas Sales Guidelines

Qualification

Must be in elgible energy community
Must receive electric service from:
- Oncor Electric
- Centerpoint
- American Electric Power (AEP)
- Texas New Mexico Power (TNMP)
Must have room in a garage for batteries. Most homes will have 2 batteries which take up about 6 feet of wall space.
Roof needs to have 10 years remaining expected life
Manufactured homes okay (but must have garage)
Metal roofs okay
Residential properties/meters only. No commercial
Generators okay
No add-on systems
No ground mounts
Homeowner must have 650+ credit with either Transunion or Equifax.
No co-signers. Single signer must either be on title or legal spouse of person on title (with marriage certificate uploaded)
LLC, Trust, etc approved with document uploaded showing that contract signer is owner/executor of Trust or LLC

80% Offset

Use accurate annual production numbers from Smart Meter Texas if not shown on their utility bill.

80% offset is based on annual production numbers and does not mean 80% of each monthly bill. See the consumption and production graphs.

In this example, you can see that the overall offset is 76%. However, the monthly offset will vary from month to month. This home’s highest usage month is September, where usage was 2223kwh. You can see that in September the system will only produce 858kwh. This represents a 39% offset for the month of September. The system’s highest production month is May with 1033kwh, when the home only used 668kwh. This is a 155% offset for May. When setting expectations with your customers please help them understand that their utility bills will vary month to month based on how much power they are using. Setting proper expectations ahead of time will help avoid frustrations down the road when they start getting their utility bills.

In general, homes that use electric heat will experience high utility bills in the winter when there is less solar production and higher home usage. This would be a good point to address with your customers during the presentation.

Monitoring Examples

In this example, usage was very low during the day so the battery went from 10% to fully charged before the sun went down. With higher night time usage, the battery only made it until about midnight. The next day the sun was not as strong, but still enough to almost fully charge the battery and get through most of the night.

In this example, the battery was already at 10% minimum before the sun came up. The solar did not fully charge the battery but it was enough to get through the whole night and still had some juice by the time the sun came up. The next day the battery filled up completely before the sun went down.

Battery backup included

Explain that batteries are included in the price, not free. The cost of the batteries is covered by tax credit and utility company payments from participation in the VPP. These batteries are fully owned and actively managed in the VPP, and we are able to capitalize more on their use when we fully control the battery. This means that we control the backup reserve percentages, emergency backup mode for storms etc. and the customer will not be altering settings.

Explain that the backup provided by the batteries is for essential loads, not whole home backup. Whole home backup is very difficult and rarely delivered as hoped. Anything with large draw (i.e. HVAC systems and electric heaters) not only risk overloading the battery but will also drain it very quickly and leave the rest of the home without power in the event of a prolonged outage. Homes are better off not attaching these loads to their backup battery and using the outlets to plug in fans or heaters that use less power but can still provide some limited temperature control in the home. This way, the essentials like lights, refrigerators, etc. can continue running as long as they need to for the grid to come back online.

2.9% Escalator

Explain that the monthly price will increase by 2.9% each year. This is not a conditional increase, it will happen every year. The purpose of the escalator is to allow our prices to keep up with expected inflation for the valuation of the account. You can highlight the fact that the increase is capped and known, and your customer will never have to worry about the price increasing by more than 2.9% each year.

SOLRITE-approved Retail Electric Provider (REP)

A key element of the SOLRITE program is the relationship with the utility. Since our VPP creates a more efficient customer for the REP, our utility partners will provide a slightly discounted rate for SOLRITE customers. This doesn’t mean we can guarantee that our REP partners will always have the lowest price available in the market, as there are over 100 REP options in the ERCOT grid. But our partners will provide a rate for SOLRITE customers that is less than their rate for regular residential customers. These rates should consistently come in below market average.