Energy Credits Pro

Under a net-metering plan your utility does not pay you for excess solar on the day you export it. It banks the excess as a credit and applies it on the days you import more than you generate. Once a year, at your true-up, the bank is settled: what is left is paid out, donated, or carried forward, depending on the plan, and the count starts again. The result is a running balance that grows through the sunny months and pays for the dark ones — and that most solar apps never show you.

GridMind’s energy-credits feature tracks that bank for you. It appears as a card on the Value page and as a detail page with your bank drawn day by day and the cycle history behind it.

How GridMind Tracks Your Bank

Every net-metering plan is described by four settings:

• Unit — whether your utility banks kilowatt-hours (Oregon) or dollars valued at your export rates (California NEM 2.0).
• Settlement — monthly plans bill any net import each cycle and never let the bank go below zero; annual plans let the running balance go negative and settle everything at the true-up.
• True-up month — the billing cycle in which your bank resets. Oregon plans true up in March; California customers choose the anniversary month on their interconnection agreement.
• At true-up — whether the remaining balance resets (Oregon’s leftover goes to low-income energy assistance) or carries over.

Billing cycles follow your meter-read day, the same “bill reset day” the Value page uses. GridMind walks your daily energy history cycle by cycle: exports add to the bank, imports draw it down, monthly plans floor at zero at each cycle end, and the true-up boundary resets or carries the balance and records what was forfeited.

Anchoring to Your Bill

Your utility’s meter is the source of truth, so GridMind lets you anchor the bank to a real statement. Enter the read date printed on a bill and the credit balance it shows, and GridMind starts from that figure and walks forward from the next day. Add a new anchor whenever a bill arrives; the most recent one wins, and GridMind keeps up to 36.

Without an anchor GridMind estimates the bank from the start of your current credit year, assuming it began at zero, and labels the card Estimated. The card also tells you when days of data are missing or when GridMind’s history starts after your credit year did, so you always know how much to trust the number.

A bill that prints 0 banked means nothing was banked — not that nothing was owed. On a monthly plan your utility bills any shortfall at the meter read and never shows a negative bank, so a zero anchor pulls GridMind’s figure down to zero if GridMind thought you still had credits, and leaves a shortfall GridMind has counted exactly where it was. Once a billing cycle has closed without a bill anchored inside it, the Energy credits page suggests adding that bill.

What the Card and Detail Page Show

• Banked balance — in kWh or dollars, with how much it moved this cycle and, for kWh plans, an estimate of what that energy is worth at your peak rate.
• Verdict line — where this cycle’s value went, in one sentence (see Where Your Value Went below).
• Basis chip — Anchored to your bill or Estimated, plus any data notes.
• Your bank, day by day — a chart across the credit year that fills on surplus days, drains on deficit days and dips below zero while a monthly cycle runs short. Its caption adds up — surplus days minus deficit days, plus the bills that adjusted the bank, equals today’s position — and on monthly plans it totals what earlier short cycles were billed this credit year. Hover a day with a bill on it to see the balance that bill printed and how far it moved GridMind’s tally. Switch the card to the Tank view to see the same bank as a glass filling toward the year’s high-water mark; the choice is remembered. A compact copy of the chart sits on the Grid page.
• Cycle table — credit, debit, net and the bank at the end of every cycle in the credit year, the amount billed for monthly plans, the last true-up’s forfeited amount, and a Credit year so far row that totals them.
• Projection — once GridMind holds the same cycles from a year earlier, the future cycles are drawn dashed and a sentence tells you where the bank is heading at the true-up. Until then the chart says why there is no projection yet and when one becomes possible, and projects the current cycle to its meter read at this cycle’s pace.

Where Your Value Went

Above the cycle history, the detail page explains where this cycle’s value is going and what would change it — in the terms of your plan, because a bank of kilowatt-hours and a bank of dollars reward different habits.

• A verdict for the cycle — after seven days of data, one sentence on how the cycle is shaping up and what the balance is worth. The same sentence appears on the Value page card.
• kWh banks (Oregon net metering) — your utility nets the whole cycle before it banks anything, so exporting at peak and importing off-peak does not grow the bank. GridMind says so plainly and points at what does matter: energy lost cycling the battery for exports, on-peak usage your exports did not cover, and credits that would be forfeited at the true-up.
• Dollar banks (California NEM 2.0) — timing is the lever, so GridMind values what charging the car off-peak and exporting the battery at peak rates would earn.
• Optimize status — whether GridMind’s Optimize is already working a lever for you. On plans that bank kilowatt-hours, Optimize can run a bank strategy built for exactly these levers; the panel then reports what it did — peak windows covered from the battery, energy charged off-peak, days the battery was parked.
• True-up warning — six to eight weeks before your true-up, if credits would be forfeited, GridMind sends one push notification and email per credit year. Turn it off under Settings → Notifications → Energy credits and true-up.

Setting Up Your Plan

1. Open Value and choose the Energy credits card, or go straight to Value → Energy credits.
2. In Plan settings, pick a preset or Custom, then confirm the unit, settlement, true-up month and your meter-read day.
3. Turn the plan on and save.
4. Under Bill anchors, enter the read date and credit balance from your latest bill.

Good to Know

• GridMind’s figure is a model of your plan, not a statement from your utility. Anchors keep it honest; when the two disagree, the bill is right.
• Dollar-unit plans price each day at the export rates that were in effect that day, so changing your tariff does not rewrite history.
• If you anchored before your last true-up, GridMind crosses the boundary for you and reports the amount that was reset.
• Monthly plans restart at zero at every meter read because the utility has billed the shortfall. The bank chart’s billed so far this credit year line and the cycle table’s Credit year so far row are where that energy went.