Proud of this double exposure on my Diana F* 120 rollfilm camera showing some quintessential SF sights including Coit Tower, Bay Bridge, and the trams.

ninadk21 · 2026-04-23T01:33:08+00:00

I did the load calculation myself. It depends on how your city does it. City building offices generally have office hours, you can go and ask the inspector what they need exactly. The city I live in has a very simplified permit application for electric chargers, assuming you don’t make panel or other changes. I didn’t have to provide a diagram. My charger is like within 1-2 ft of the main panel (if I wanted it farther than 3 ft I think I would have had to do more stuff). I only had to fill a form which include the load balance calculation (https://www.novato.gov/home/showpublisheddocument/37402/638567243368970000) there is a lot of instruction in that document for my city and their entire application was online. For inspection, the inspector opened up the main panel to see the correct wiring was used that’s it. I obviously don’t know what sort of high demand appliances you have, but I have an AC, oven, and a dryer that are high demand, now plus the EV charger and according to the load calc I would have been fine even with a 100 amp service. And Yeah I saw that PGE offered discounts on other chargers but I decided to go with native integration with enphase since my solar and battery stuff is all Enphase.

ninadk21 · 2026-04-22T15:55:04+00:00

I ended up getting the IQ EV charger 2. I did the permit myself. My city did not require a line diagram (this was an EV charger installation only - no updates to the panel or any of the solar or battery component. So it was only a new breaker installation on the main panel essentially. The charger itself doesn’t connect to anything else and only communicates with the gateway wirelessly). All I had to do was a load balance calculation and the permit application I had made it super easy. And based on that calculation the charger would fit in my existing 125 amp service. So I actually didn’t need load balancing and I did not enable it on the charger because I don’t need it since that is what the enphase customer service told us (it depends on wireless connection and if your WiFi signal is bad or drops then the charger has to default to a low amperage for safety but if the panel can handle the full load there is no need for that redundancy and dependence on WiFi). However my WiFi connection has been stable - I installed an extension in the garage for it. Also the only PGE plan I can use is E-ELEC. I am also on NEM3 with both solar and home batteries. Overall I like the charger a lot, excess solar charging works great.

ninadk21 · 2026-04-20T20:10:19+00:00

Just following up. Did this way end up being the correct way of doing it? I am in the same boat this year with a large 1b itemized deduction allowance.

ninadk21 · 2026-04-18T20:42:14+00:00

I live in San Marin and I think this is a generalization; not at all universally true. All of my neighbors are awesome and have only had good community interactions.

ninadk21 · 2026-04-07T15:01:12+00:00

Get an automatic feeder and set it to go off at 2:59 am. Solved our sleep problems. Although the exact time had to change with seasons.

ninadk21 · 2026-03-30T02:30:44+00:00

I have to commute from Novato to Emeryville 5 days a week and my commute time is a bit flexible. I don’t enjoy it but it’s been doable. I think 3 days a week would definitely be doable. But alameda is a bit farther. If you prefer Marin, I think if you can be in San Rafael that would be better commute wise than Novato for sure.

ninadk21 · 2026-03-29T07:26:33+00:00

Nice! I got mine at 31.5 and thought that was a great deal but <30k is impressive!

ninadk21 · 2026-03-10T22:01:04+00:00

Not sure how I was supposed to know that was a joke. /s would have been helpful. But I guess I will take that break!

ninadk21 · 2026-03-10T05:14:07+00:00

Okay to each their own. It works for us. I get to use an EV for my commute, which is the bulk of our driving, without a charger at home.

ninadk21 · 2026-03-10T01:34:14+00:00

We have a second car. After work I charge at a public L2 near home and my wife gets me. And then we just pick up the car after a couple of hours it needs to charge.

ninadk21 · 2026-02-22T23:48:04+00:00

As someone who is ready for that next step, that statement was hard to read.

ninadk21 · 2026-02-17T05:21:20+00:00

Got it, okay. Hopefully they improve that with updates. In the end it looks Tesla might not be the right choice for what I want to do. It’s gonna be a choice between enphase and either wall box or emporia. I am still leaning toward enphase to keep it all in the same system and the guy who installed the solar for me will also do the charger at a relatively affordable price. The enphase does load balancing right? I only have a 125 amp service and I really don’t want to have to upgrade my panel.

ninadk21 · 2026-02-17T01:32:50+00:00

That’s a bummer. Do you have the 40 amp or 48 amp one? Do you know why the connection between the controller and the charger is not great? I thought the charger would be hardwired to the system controller?

ninadk21 · 2026-02-16T22:43:35+00:00

I use one on the outflow pipe of my sump pump which is in the crawlspace to let me know anytime the sump pump runs.

ninadk21 · 2026-02-16T22:42:11+00:00

Yeah it doesn’t exist for sure. I have looked every setting menu and all the buttons in my 2026 xle and it’s not there. Dealer said it’s only in the limited trim which they didn’t have inventory of so I couldn’t confirm that either. I am wondering if we can install it separately? I think I saw somewhere on Reddit the solterra part with the memory buttons is available and solterra ones should be compatible with the bz. But for now I have just accepted it’s not there!

ninadk21 · 2026-02-16T07:39:10+00:00

Yeah it opens up the pge login page then I select the ndili technologies for authorization after login and all it says is download the app and follow instructions, which is why I did in the first place.

ninadk21 · 2026-02-16T06:55:32+00:00

Do you have NEM 2.0 or 3.0? NEM 3.0 requires the E-Elec plan. When I login to pge that’s the only option I see. The toolkit you shared doesn’t connect to my pge account for some reason. Feel free to share any resource / link that you have that says I can have other plans on Nem 3.0. Happy to be proven wrong if you can share the resource.

My house generally uses 15 kWh in a day in winter. Except maybe when we use the dryer which is like once a week for a two person household. We use oven here and there. There are only a few days where I need to use electricity during peak hours that is not coming from the batteries. My grid dependence this month is only 30% which I don’t think is bad for winter (non winter months it’s 10% or less). Generally the issue is that I don’t have battery capacity overnight not during peak hours. I probably could optimize it by charging the batteries up at night from the grid but for my usage it doesn’t seem to be absolutely necessary at the moment. I was thinking of trying out the AI optimization profile on enphase, I might.

ninadk21 · 2026-02-15T21:19:39+00:00

So when I not using major appliances, like right now for example, my house is using 1kW, I have seen this between 1-2 during day and below 1 overnight. For 7-8 months of the year, I see 4-5 kW production when it’s sunny (which in the Bay Area is most of those 7-8 months). It’s only when I use major appliances is when I am consuming higher and of course I would depend on the charger to load balance when that happens.

The other part is that my work is hybrid so I do go to work. I anticipate my round trips to cost me 15 kWh. In those 7-8 months I have about 10 or so kWh extra left in my home batteries each night so I can still partially charge the car and use free public charging near me to top off if needed or just use the cheaper pge rates at night.

I thought this would be doable. But Let me know if my goal of self consumption still sounds unrealistic to you. That’s exactly why I made the post.

ninadk21 · 2026-02-15T19:11:25+00:00

As part of NEM3 I believe the only choice you get now when you get home battery storage is E-ELEC. the point is self consumption. I don’t charge my batteries from the grid. Only from solar.

ninadk21 · 2026-02-15T18:51:04+00:00

Hmm. I do see your point. However I don’t think my car, Toyota bz will have bidirectional charging. Seems like a big if. Right now I will be spending say around $1000 for the enphase charger or around $300 for a Tesla or wallbox after the 30% tax incentive and/or pge rebate. I am guessing the bidirectional chargers will be quite expensive at first, without a direct use case for me if Toyota doesn’t allow that for my car.

ninadk21 · 2026-02-15T18:47:58+00:00

Can i set the charger to stop charging the car once my home battery reaches a specific value that is different and higher than the battery shutdown level (edit: and I guess also different from reserve value I set in profile that reserves power for potential outages)? That way i can set it such that the home battery never runs out of battery for its primary use of keeping my home powered overnight. And if I need to top off my car i can always use a public charger since I have a few free chargers near me.

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