Have you priced residential batteries and time of use to charge at night? That's Base Power's value prop, they partner with ComEd, install batteries at your home and become your power provider charging a lower rate than ComEd. Batteries charge at night when nuclear generators are still humming and demand is low, and then serve daytime load.
Solar may not pencil out, but energy arb over system lifetime might, especially if you have any battery subsidies available. Just keep in mind flexibility to add solar in the future so its as trivial as installing racking and panels and running power to the storage and load center (optimize for optionality).
https://www.chicagotribune.com/2026/07/28/base-power-battery...
Their problem is that they don’t really leave you with enough power for real emergencies, while they are hyper focused on doing their energy arbitrage.
See https://epicelectrical.com/what-is-base-power/ for one take on this problem.
For me, I’m happy to have batteries at my home and to voluntarily participate in a VPP, up to certain limits. If there is a predictable bad weather situation coming up, then I want to be able to turn off the VPP and store as much energy locally as I can. And I can only do that if I fully own the battery system that is in place. Tesla doesn’t help me there, neither does Base Power.
If you find a solution, I would be interested.
Get your own battery systems, that you pay for yourself.
Once they are installed, you can then choose to join a VPP program, where you control how much energy will be sold back, and when.
Of course, you won’t make as much money, but you will have more control over how much power is left in your batteries for when you might really need it.
I get service from San Diego Gas & Electric, have solar and powerwalls, and am part of Community Power's VPP. I am prohibited from charging my powerwall from the grid.
Is this a utility requirement? My understanding is this was due to previous IRS guidance about battery tax subsidies that potentially no longer applies, although I wouldn't be surprised if this is a utility requirement to be on a time of use plan to prevent you from maxing savings by having solar and charging from utility mains at night.
https://diysolarforum.com/threads/new-irs-requirements-for-b...
> The private [IRS] letter ruling was from 2016, prior to the explicit credit for batteries.
From 2023:
> “Batteries and the federal tax credit at a glance: Residential batteries installed in 2023 can qualify for the 30% federal tax credit, even if they aren’t attached to solar panels. The value of the tax credit will vary depending on the equipment installed and labor costs. The battery must be installed at the taxpayer’s residence and be owned by the taxpayer to receive the tax credit.”
(the setting is controlled by Tesla and I have heard some folks, anecdotally, having it removed with a support ticket, ymmv)