Sacramento’s power company and law enforcement agencies have been running an illegal mass surveillance scheme for years, using our power meters as home-mounted spies. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is seeking to end Sacramento’s dragnet surveillance of energy customers and have asked for a court order to stop this practice for good.
I don’t see how this is a surprise or secret knowledge and certainly don’t see how you’d get charged for using the batteries if you didn’t know. If the panels and the batteries are on the same side of the meter, then using power from them will slow (and even reverse) the meter. Are you talking about emergency batteries requiring a total switch over between sources? Or are they integrated night time buffers for solar?