The Solar Battery Settings That Saved Me the Most Money — Net Metering Not Required

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes

If you live in a state WITHOUT net metering the money you save by having solar panels and batteries is determined by how efficiently you use what you generate. This article discusses the best settings for your solar battery to save the most money on your power bill. Tested on an Enphase system — though principles should apply to Powerwall, SolarEdge, and beyond

We show screenshots from the Enphase app, but if you’re on a different system, look for these same settings — they’ll just be labeled differently. Before we dive into battery settings, let’s spend a hot minute talking about net metering.

What is net metering?

First off, what is net metering? The net in “net metering” is the difference between what you produced yourself versus what you pull from the grid. So if you make more than you use, the rest goes back to the grid and you get paid, usually by a credit on your bill. On the other hand, if you end up using more than you make, you pull more energy off the grid and pay more.

Some states have state-wide policies for net metering. Some policies are more local. Some are friendly to net metering, some hostile. Like Texas for instance where the TCA lives. Because Texas is a big oil and gas state the state legislature is not friendly to alternative energy. Which is ironic as Texas has become THE largest alternative energy producer in the U.S., by far.

Most electricity plans here in Texas, including the one the TCA has, have some sort of limited payback for energy sent back to the grid. In practice, it’s pretty sad, and a great deal for the grid provider here (Centerpoint). For every kilowatt consumed, I pay about 14 cents, for every kilowatt sent to the grid, I get about 3 cents.

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Power plans and pricing

My electricity plan is through Champion Energy, and Centerpoint runs the infrastructure (power lines, distribution system, power plants, etc.). I chose the “free weekends” plan with Champion, so I don’t get charged by Champion for using energy on weekends. Sounds like a great idea, however, I STILL get charged a “delivery fee” on weekends from Centerpoint, which is about 4 cents per kilowatt/hour.

I was noticing that even though I did all the energy intensive tasks on the weekend (laundry, dishwasher, charging my plug-in hybrid car, running the A/C a little colder, etc.), my bills were still pretty high. I felt I wasn’t getting the full benefit of my solar system.

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Power System Settings

In the Enphase app there are 3 battery system settings… self consumption, savings and full backup. Self Consumption “maximizes energy independence”; Savings “minimizes electricity bill”; and Full Backup “prepares home for power outages”. You would think that “Savings” would give you the best bang for the buck, but that didn’t seem to be the case.

I tried different things to improve savings including tinkering with the settings in the “Savings” option, but it didn’t make much difference. Eventually, I set it to “Self Consumption”, and that’s where I found the biggest savings, making this the best settings for my solar battery!

To change your settings in the Enphase app, follow these directions…

The self-consumption mode ends up pulling the least amount of energy off the grid. This mode prioritizes charging your batteries from the solar array, then pulls off the house battery in the evening when the sun goes down. Thereby minimizing your total pull off the grid. It only sends energy to the grid after your batteries are at 100% and your house is using less energy than you are currently producing.

Things to note from this graph, all of this data represents energy from solar panels, which were installed in 2024. Batteries were installed around July of 2025, and my overall energy use starts to drop shortly after. Round about November (green box) I changed the settings for my system from “savings” to “self consumption”, which maximized the use of the energy I generate myself through my solar panels.

You can see a significant drop in monthly energy use pulled off the grid after changing settings (green box). Of note, it was a bit cooler last winter (2025), but I actually ran the heat MORE this year due to complaints from a family member that it was too cold in the house last year. (The blower in the furnace uses electricity, but the heat is provided by natural gas.)

Using my own energy and saving money gives me a lot of satisfaction. Opting out of as much as possible of the energy rip off by the electric utility here also makes me happy. It’s not even the environmental benefits so much, of which there are many, as it is being a bit more self sufficient. Should (when) the grid goes down here during the next big hurricane, I look forward to still being able to power my house at nearly the same level of comfort I have on a normal day.

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What about you? Are these the best settings for your solar batteries? Do you have any tips about how to get the most out of your solar system? Let the people know by commenting below! Thank you for reading.

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If you like what you read, please support the blog…

The energy market here in Texas is deregulated. What that means in practice is that there is usually one infrastructure company that controls and maintains all the power lines and power stations in a given area, then the actual selling of the electricity is done by different smaller companies who do all the billing and accounting. Different companies offer different power plans here, but most of the plans are the same. And the ones that are different somehow are usually crazy expensive.

I have used Champion Energy for a while now. They have one of the best reputations for customer service and are usually pretty responsive. If you live in Texas, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Jersey, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, or Maine, you may be in their service area. If you want to try them out, use the link below and save $50 off your first bill. The TCA will also get a $50 credit at no cost to you. Help support the blog so I can write more articles about alternative energy and climate adaptation. Thanks! 🙂