Figure

What a home battery earns: event pay versus a capacity payment

A typical 5 kW home battery in SCE's emergency program earns about $100 across a summer's events at $2 per kWh, or about $540 a year committed as capacity to the DSGS program at about $108 per kW-year, close to the roughly $138 per kW-year a grid battery earned from resource adequacy. The difference is durability.

Chart comparing annual compensation for a typical 5 kW home battery across paths: about $100 from SCE emergency event pay at $2 per kWh, about $540 from the DSGS capacity payment at about $108 per kW-year, against roughly $138 per kW-year a grid battery earns from resource adequacy. Dollar figures are arithmetic on posted rates.

This figure is from the Southern California Edison case study, a primary-source look at how California procured storage and what pointing the same playbook at demand would add.

Cite this figure

Corey Balgeman, "What a home battery earns: event pay versus a capacity payment," Grid Flexibility, 2026. https://gridflexibility.fyi/case-studies/southern-california-edison/figures/capacity-payment-paths

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Last updated: 2026-07-03.