While the deployment of renewable energy sources as an alternative to fossil fuels has garnered global attention, the intermittent and unpredictable nature of renewables has spurred a growing interest in energy storage. However, effective management of energy storage is far from trivial for residential consumers owing to various compensation and pricing structures, as well as uncertainties in electricity demand and generation. In this paper, we consider a grid-connected residental consumer facing two-part time-of-use tariffs and sellback compensation. We propose an effective battery operating policy utilizing two thresholds --- a ``purchase up-to'' threshold in the off-peak period and a ``sell down-to'' threshold in the peak period. Through a full-factorial numerical experiment, we show that this simple control policy can substantially increase the value of home energy storage while performing nearly as well as battery optimization under certainty, thus leaving little room for improvement from more complex, forecast-driven approaches. From a policy perspective, our results indicate that imposing restrictions on the purchase of electricity from the grid to charge the battery is counter-productive to the adoption of this technology and the health of the grid and environment. In addition, through case studies of U.S. cities, we show that strategically managing home energy storage makes this technology significantly more attractive even in communities where it would add no value when managed passively. Furthermore, real-world implementation in a community setting validates the effectiveness and robustness of the battery management policy established in this paper, highlighting its resilience to changes in billing and compensation plans. Our findings provide valuable insights into the effective utilization of residential energy storage systems under evolving regulatory and market conditions.
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