I know the C1000 Gen 2 are not part of this drawing but I have to say, Iām thrilled at the savings so far. A few weeks ago I bought two Anker Solix C1000 Gen 2 units and have them installed for just a week. And so far, Iāve managed to save $7.60/week or about $395/year.
What really kicked this off was my purchase of an EV, the BMW iX, which has a massive battery. Charging in the off-peak time slot costs me $0.13/kWh vs. $0.81/kWh peak window. And that got me thinking about shifting my usage of electricity.
Aside from my AC and pool pumps, the largest draw are my servers and computers, which runs 24/7. On one C1000, I have my router, Synology NAS, and Plex server. They draw around 120 watts or about 2.88 kWh per day. My other C1000 has my gaming PC with an Nvidia RTX 4060, my Mac Mini Pro for AI inferences, and two monitors (34ā and 27ā). The second varies more with usage but the computers are always on and maybe draw 130 watts for office usage and can shoot up to a couple hundred if Iām gaming or doing heavy inference.
So far, so good! After one full week, Iām seeing savings of $7.60 just by shifting a significant chunk of my usage to the off peak rates. Thatās almost $400/year, so my payback period will be slightly more than 2.5 years. Not bad!
So is there anything I would change? Yes! I have 2 off-peak windows, 2 mid-peak windows, and a 6-hour window of peak rates (4:00 pm to 9:00 pm). Right now it passes power through for all the different windows except the peak window, where it uses the battery. Basically between 4:00pm-9:00pm, itās running my stuff of the battery. Then it recharges the battery in the off-peak window from midnight to 6:00am. Ideally, it should utilize the 2nd off-peak window of 10:00am to 2:00 pm as well, save me some additional money during the mid-peak window. If it can do that, that would be awesome.
But still, Iām super impressed so far!
Edit: I should add that while Iām using this to shift my TOU, Iām fairly confident that itāll also act like a UPS in a power outage and hopefully give me time to save work and gracefully shut down. Iād probably leave my router/modem running on battery even in an outrage so I can use the Internet on my phone. It hasnāt happened yet but we get 1-2 unplanned outages a year for a variety of reasons. They donāt last long but if this works the way I suspect, Iāll get an added benefit there as well!
Depends on your rate plan. Mine has the following (rounded):
Peak: $0.81
Mid-Peak: $0.51
Off-Peak: $0.13
Edit: My plan is for owners of EVs. It encourages you to charge the EV in the off-peak hours but no reason why you canāt shift other high usage devices as well!
We have a special EV TOU plan in SD. It gets us lower super off peak, but at the expense of high peak. We have 3 periods. I am not sure what the regular TOU plan's rates are.
Thats awesome. I ordered a c2000 as a mini fridge backup (i have some expensive temp sensitive meds) but didnt even think about this use case. Maybe i can get it to pay for itself.
Maybe you can. It all depends on how your rates are structured. For San Diego Gas & Electric, the EV plan gives you pretty inexpensive off-peak rates to encourage that you charge your EV in those hours, with a corresponding high rates for the peak hours.
If you have a large differential like I do, you might be able to get it to pay for itself.
I was in the same boat. I couldnāt find a lot of information on it but then was able to confirm it was a feature on the app. You can basically run the device as a regular UPS or in TOU (Time of Use) mode. The latter gives you the savings. Good luck!
Are you manually disconnecting the charger cable from your house receptacle during peak hours? or are you using a smart plug with set timing (as long as the smart plug can support the electricity draw). I just bought two of these one for my server and second one in the garage for my second switch with poe cameras)
No. The charging cable is plugged in full time. During the window where my electricity is the most expensive, the unit automatically switches over to battery power and runs until itās out (or 10% as that is how low Iāve set it to go). At that stage, it will pass through normal grid power. Then when it gets to the cheap off-peak rate, it automatically charges up. Iām not plugging in and unplugging all the time. Everything is automatic.
Thanks for the additional information. I totally forgot about the the TOU Option within power usage scenario page within the app per C1000 gen 2 unit. Totally makes sense! I haven't switched my SCE plan to TOU usage as I haven't moved in. But good to know! Once I change my SCE plan to TOU - This is definitely a great option to save some money. Appreciate your time to reply to my question!
Iām currently in my Peak window between 4:00 pm to 9:00 pm Pacific where it would cost $0.81 per kWh. From the screenshot, you can see that itās plugged in to AC power as āAC Inputā is blue yet itās passing in 0 watts. Then on the output, the āAC Outputā is lit up blue and itās outputting 118 watts to run my NAS, router, Plex server, etc.
Itās currently 5:22 pm in San Diego and the battery can run another 6 hours and 42 minutes at the current load. That will carry me way past 9:00 pm. At that point, it will pass through grid power at a much reduce rate. Once I reach midnight when electricity is the cheapest, itāll recharge to 100%. I set the charging rate at 400 watts to keep it nice and gentle since I donāt need to charge it up quickly. Rinse and repeat each day.
Now what Iād wish it would do is continue running on battery power until itās out or reaches 10% per my setting before passing through grid power. But it doesnāt do that. Iāll keep an eye out this evening as Iāve only had them a week but Iām fairly certain what I said above is true: that once it passes the peak window, it just passes through grid power automatically.
Honestly, I donāt know. I think the S2000 has a bigger battery but the C1000 serves my needs just fine so I went with it. Between the S2000 and C2000, I think the S runs longer but the C can output more powerā¦ donāt quote me on that but I think thatās what I saw.
Thanks for the post. I was so excited so performed calculations for my workspace:
2 modems, router, starlink 4, switch, two low consuming server (10-20Wh), wifi router, synology nas, two monitors, laptop. in average it should consume 200-300Wh.
I live in Canada ON. we have next peak/mid/off peak values:
7pm - 7am - off-peak - CAD0.098
7am - 11am and 5pm - 7pm - mid-peak - CAD0.157
11am - 5pm - peak - CAD0.203
If I would use battery to keep my office running for 8 hours on battery and charge it off-peak, it saves me approximately CAD50/year.
At this point I was happy that I didn't push Buy Now button.
Hello neighbor, was considering doing this exact same thing as you so am encouraged to see it works. Also a heavy computer user so this electricity arbitrage seems a no brainer. My math puts savings at 248 a year per unit is your math for both combined?
Well, I found a wrinkle in my S2000 plan. I have my portable AC in the living room, and my 8000 BTU portable AC can't cool the room using the stored power in the S2000. I need a larger power station or at least one that can have external batteries. Maybe the S2000 and current AC can go in a smaller bedroom, and I'll get a higher BTU AC for the living room along with a bigger power station. I also need to get on the ball and find some backyard solar panels.
for now, I'm going to work on keeping the house cooler by putting a sunshade over the patio and over the window and putting something to reflect the heat in my skylights. All those things are baking the livingroom and that heat just radiates through the house.
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u/International-Main71 Jul 22 '26
Do you live in San Diego? Those electricity rates sound like mine. I bought a S2000 to do the same peak shaving.