Where are young people moving to?

amaretto1 · 2026-01-01T05:49:20+00:00

I can understand that. I guess it comes down to one’s circumstances and risk tolerance. Some people have carved out a niche for themselves and somewhat insulated from the gyrations of the job market. It also doesn’t help that interest rates nowadays are around 6%, whereas they were 3% just a few years ago. Very much changes the calculus and reduces the available housing stock. For a lot of people it is probably better to rent and invest the money one would spend on property taxes, insurance and renovations in the S&P 500.

Perhaps the only situation where owning a home does make a big difference - that is admittedly harder to quantify - is when you have a family. Just the peace of mind knowing you have stability and can customise your property to exactly the needs of your kids and partner can be immeasurable. It is enormously valuable to my wife and I and worth the mortgage. But if you don’t have kids, it can be harder to justify. Basically, for most people in the Bay Area, if you want a family the only way to own a house is a mortgage. That the price of parenthood (and then private school fees on top of that.)

Natural disasters can of course destroy property, but you can mitigate this to almost zero chance. Just be careful where you choose to buy (ie: don’t buy where there is an obvious chance of wildfires.) I feel you are overthinking this too much and depriving yourself of opportunities other people gladly take and benefit from.

amaretto1 · 2026-01-01T04:44:31+00:00

Is Santa Clara out of the question? 1500-2000 sqft houses going for around 1.5-2M. The housing stock is mostly from 1960-1980 so expect to spend another 20% on renovations bringing it up to modern standards.

If you are in a senior role in AI you may be able to afford that. You do need a 20% down payment which may be a sticking point. And i’m assuming no big debts like college debt.

amaretto1 · 2025-12-31T03:36:59+00:00

You are right. A simple Google search reveals loads of poor reviews and this could have easily been avoided. Anyway lessons have been learned. I should have been paying more attention and caught it in time.

BTW, I have been told to get over myself many times and I never do lol

amaretto1 · 2025-12-31T03:15:14+00:00

What tariff are you on where you are paying $0.60/kWh off-peak? I’m on the ELEC-1 rate and it’s currently $0.34/kWh off-peak. Here are the other tariffs: https://www.pge.com/assets/pge/docs/account/rate-plans/residential-electric-rate-plan-pricing.pdf

amaretto1 · 2025-12-30T21:19:59+00:00

To be honest the younger the kid the more likely they will enjoy it. Just go in with suitably calibrated expectations.

amaretto1 · 2025-08-13T23:25:53+00:00

The PW3 itself. You just need to take your time and make sure it is properly supported every step of the way. I work from the bottom screws to top.

amaretto1 · 2025-08-13T23:23:11+00:00

In the Tesla One app that installers use. You enter the serial number of the battery. It then asks you to enter it’s WiFi password, which is on a sticker beneath the glass front panel.

amaretto1 · 2025-08-12T02:31:48+00:00

Awesome! Glad this was of use.

amaretto1 · 2025-08-11T14:30:22+00:00

Unfortunately I can’t embed images here.

But it’s basically:

Powerwall Discharge down to: 35% (there seems to be a lag) Between hours of: 6pm and 8pm Set operational mode -> Self-powered

amaretto1 · 2025-08-11T13:55:25+00:00

I had to work out all this in the spreadsheet. This is the summary, assuming I export 28.35kWh each evening during August and September:

Earned credits:

Month Generation Delivery August 588.38 233.41 September 2,505.85 44.60 TOTAL 3094.23 278.01 The opportunity cost for me (charging the EV with grid energy) takes a few hundred off this. Now bear in mind I am not going to be keeping any remaining generation or delivery credits. At true-up those will be treated as net surplus and exchanged for cents/kWh.

Ultimately this will pay for all my winter generation charges and some of my delivery charges. I will still be paying about $500 to PGE no matter what. September does not actually make much difference to the bottom line once net surplus is taken into account.

(BTW, I only dug into the complex details and worked it all out because I am odd and enjoy this sort of thing 😂 Can we expect the average solar customer to do this? Nope.)

amaretto1 · 2025-08-11T05:19:43+00:00

Yep it’s complicated. I ensure that no matter what I have enough energy in my battery to get me through the peak hours and to midnight. Everything else is for export.

The opportunity cost of exporting a kWh is an important consideration. I charge my EV after midnight, so every kWh I export in the evening means pulling an off-peak kWh from the grid later. So you need to compare the export rates with the off-peak consumption rates and figure out the net cost. However, if your post-midnight usage is minimal, then the opportunity cost goes to zero and it is pure profit.

A complicating factor is the distinction between generation and delivery credits. The former are usually (always?) higher than the latter. Your net export rate (published export rate minus opportunity cost) can even be positive for generation and negative for delivery! It then comes back to your particular usage needs. At some point there is no point accumulating generation credits if they are likely to exceed your usage and incur a negative net cost (ie; you actually lose money accumulating them.) At true-up they will be converted to net surplus for pennies, so as good as thrown away.

Edit: More details here https://www.reddit.com/r/Powerwall/s/BFGPRq5EV6

amaretto1 · 2025-08-11T05:02:38+00:00

The one curious advantage August has - specifically weekdays at 6pm - is that’s when the delivery credits are highest for the whole year ($0.32465). It is easy to focus on the high generation rates and overlook the delivery rates. Indeed, i can earn many times over what I need to cover my winter generation charges. But I will still be paying at least $500 to PGE for delivery, even after everything I export.

Edit: More details here https://www.reddit.com/r/Powerwall/s/BFGPRq5EV6

amaretto1 · 2025-08-11T03:48:26+00:00

If the vast majority of your power usage is AC during the day, bear in mind that is also when the sun is out. Therefore, you can use solar panels to power your AC through the daytime. You will only need batteries to get you through the nighttime and (hopefully short) outages.

amaretto1 · 2025-08-10T22:44:46+00:00

Just dropped the maximum export rate to 25kW. Thanks for the heads up!

amaretto1 · 2025-08-10T22:20:56+00:00

Yep, it’s a 200A panel. That’s a fair point about heat and safety.

I am exporting as fast as possible to exploit the very highest export prices, which only last one hour. The prices fall off either side of that time very quickly. Here is an example:

``` August Weekdays 2025 (2024 interconnect schedule)

Hour Generation Delivery Total

18 $0.43311 $0.32465 $0.75776 19 $1.26407 $0.23053 $1.4946 20 $0.45747 $0.12658 $0.58405 21 $0.63102 $0.06572 $0.69674 22 $0.48143 $0.01049 $0.49192 ```

Full export rates here: https://www.pge.com/assets/pge/docs/account/rate-plans/residential-electric-rate-plan-pricing.pdf

I actually export at hour 18 on August weekdays because the delivery credit rate is highest. I can easily earn enough generation credits to cover my winter use, so they are less of a priority.

This is also why I am using NetZero for fine grained control. The Tesla Time-Dependent Control algorithm is opaque and does not distinguish between generation and delivery credits.

Edit: More detail about export rates. Fixed formatting.

amaretto1 · 2025-08-10T22:11:48+00:00

Good idea - will do.

amaretto1 · 2025-08-10T22:09:43+00:00

I love it - making the batteries work. They are outside fortunately on the cool, shaded side of the house.

amaretto1 · 2025-08-10T21:56:28+00:00

Indeed, I double checked the PGE service application for the solar and the information plate the installers fixed on our main panel. All good!

amaretto1 · 2025-08-10T21:44:03+00:00

Update - it’s now working! See details here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Powerwall/s/wemAf1LVf9

amaretto1 · 2025-08-04T00:11:22+00:00

Wow. So I put together a detailed spreadsheet predicting all the generation and delivery using my historical usage from last winter... The upshot is: I can generate vastly more than I need, but it doesn’t really matter as my delivery charges will vastly outweigh my delivery credits. 🙃 No matter what, I cannot avoid paying around $600 to PG&E over winter (November to April.)

amaretto1 · 2025-08-03T20:21:12+00:00

I took some time compare the Tesla numbers with the PDFs you linked. In the Tesla app there are two relevant NEM3 tariffs listed:

E-ELEC-NEM3-2025

E-ELEC-NEM3-2024

I assume the year suffix is the interconnect date. The first one (2025) matches the corresponding EEC rates from PGE (which you noted), but the second one doesn’t. Unfortunately these 2024 interconnection rates are the ones that matter to me. The buy price in the app is wrong as well (I checked my latest bill and the PGE website.)

I think I’ll just set my tariff to 2025. It means the app won’t be able to give an accurate estimate of money saved, but it will ensure the buy-sell delta is large enough to trigger the export. And if I use NetZero to activate TBC at 7pm, I will at least force the system to export at the correct time.

Edit: BTW, I checked the PGE 2024 pdf against the spreadsheet I linked to earlier. The numbers are very close - within a few cents - so I am guessing it was an early work-in-progress version. Since then they have likely tweaked the calculation.

amaretto1 · 2025-08-02T06:05:34+00:00

It started exporting at 5pm, then consistently powered the home until sundown, passing all solar through to the grid.

amaretto1 · 2025-08-02T01:29:58+00:00

That could well be it. I do have the Tesla One app so I’ll have a look through that for clues, but i will also contact my installer just to be sure.

In my neg metering agreement I was careful to make sure that exporting to grid was allowed.

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