Nem 3.0 Battery Savings

Overview

Nem 3.0 was a law in California that will change the solar industry dramatically. We expected our sales to take a hit when this legislation was announced. We went all hands on deck to find a solution to combat this change.

Role

Product Designer

Understanding the problem

On December 15, 2022, the California Public Utilities Commission voted unanimously to approve California's third iteration of net metering, or NEM 3.0. Under the new tariff, NEM 3.0 has significantly reduced net metering compensation rates for new California solar customers (by about 75 percent). With this huge cut in solar credit, the incentive to buy solar dramatically fell.

To better sell solar in California after NEM 3.0, the product team decided to go with the approach with selling solar with an emphasis on batteries and how batteries can help reduce the cost of utility bills. We went with this approach because our analysis showed that the payback period for solar would be eight to ten years for solar on its own and shorter for homeowners who installed a battery with solar. While your payback period for a solar-plus-storage system may still be higher under NEM 3.0 than under NEM 2.0, it's now less than if you install solar. This means that under NEM 3.0, you'll save the most over your solar energy system's lifetime if you add a battery.

Impact of Nem 3.0:

The changes to California's net metering policy cut the value of solar energy credits by about 75 percent for PG&E, SCE, and SDG&E customers.
Payback period is faster with a purchase including a battery under NEM 3.0

Gathering Insights

We took a deep dive into how NEM 3.0 will be calculated and the increase cost of utility in the coming years and figured out some rough numbers on how everything will be calculated. After looking in depth on the numbers we came up with a spreadsheet of how everything will be calculated and how adding a battery will save a homeowner money in the long run.

Brainstorm

After figuring out how the numbers are calculated, we went ahead and started planning how we can display the information and the experience the sales rep and homeowner will be going through in this new battery page.

Mapping the experience

Early Iterations

The Design

The final iteration of this battery page has elements from our early iterations and our goal here was to simplify the information so it can be easily readable by the homeowners as the sales reps walk them through the solar buying process. We emphasize the savings as that's the number that really matters to the end user.

Results & Takeaways

Since the implementation of the new battery page, we have seen an increase in solar sales since the drop of NEM 3.0. Additionally, I have received positive feedback from users about the simplified configuration of the the battery options, saving them a large proportion of their time explaining the benefits of a battery with NEM 3.0.

Some key takeaways from this project are:

Create a strategic plan to launch an MVP. This helps deal with out-of-scope requests that could potentially derail the project and helps deliver a quality product in time.
User testing doesn't end after development. Design is a constant iteration of improving the experience for the end user. Always find ways to collect and listen to your user's feedback.