It’s downstream of the meter, so while it’s maybe possible my electrons leave my house the meter would spin backwards. I need to ask about net metering and what not.
Re: cost. I think you’re right that the $3k option is maybe a little suspect. And that the cost of installing something like this is probably thousands between parts and labor.
Big question is what happens after two years. If they sell it to me at a decent price then it’s all mine to fiddle with. And I think they may offer a fair deal, if the alternative is they have to pay an electrician a thousand dollars to come remove everything, and try to sell a used battery to someone else.
I’m curious about funding here. I wonder if they got a grant or some IRA money or something here.
Unrelated, the crew who built my porch did a fantastic job. I told the owner if he’d give me a company shirt I’d wear it around town. Today he dropped off a Carhartt hoodie with the company logo, it’s a nice one!
Who pays for the installation? $240 for 2 years? Max benefit sounds like $2.20 or so a day due to price differential, assuming charge rate allows it to fully charge and discharge each day. I’d do it.
They pay for install, I’m only out $10/mo. I think it’ll wind up paying for itself or nearly so. And if the power goes out we can still function. We live in an old neighborhood with old power lines and lose power about twice a year.
$10/month for power backup on important stuff seems worth it to me on that alone.I would take that deal.
The time of day electricity use would be a bonus, my guess is that it’ll more than cover $10/month. This is a good thing IMO, evens out the power grid.
Plus, depending on where you are, you could be dependent on Canadian generated electricity. That might be a bit shaky these days.
I’m in Kansas, half our power is wind and 10-15% is nuclear, I don’t think we get any juice from Canada! In the summer we run a lot of nat gas plants to cover peak AC use, batteries would cut that down, nice win.
Reading some more on the free battery thing. We’ve just stuck with the flat rate electricity pricing, this would require us to enroll in a time-of-use plan. They have a few, all of them center around reducing use between 4-8PM on weekdays. They have a thing on the website that tells you what your cost would have been for the past year under various plans, using your actual usage.
One plan clocks in $15 higher for the year. If I switch to that plan, I’d set my EV to charge at the ‘super off-peak’ rates from midnight to 6AM. I pay $0.14 per kWh now, I could get $0.03 on this plan and save $200/yr charging my car. I charged about 1,900 kWh at home in the past year. Obviously, I could switch to this plan without getting the battery.
But if they do what they say, and charge the battery at those $0.03 rates and then discharge it when rates are high… if it cycles through the full 16kWh daily it might save me something like $50/mo. The math is a little fuzzy since I’m contemplating the plan change, but end of the day being able to reliably buy 16kWh/day at $0.03 is pretty sweet.
Agreed. “My solar, my choice.”
And, “My roof, YOU pay ME to put your panels on it, not the other way around.”
Also, unless the company is a big one, they will not likely be around long. If they go under, you have panels on your roof that will be owned by who-knows-who. And maybe the contract will be voided.
Conclusion: buy your own. Fill up a battery. Sell the excess power. Use the battery power at night.
I have solar with a battery but it isn’t a UPS. If the grid power goes out, whether I’m on solar during the day or battery at night, the system will shut off then switch from dual power to local only. So I still get bumped for 15 to 30 seconds or so, so anything I don’t have on a separate UPS will go out. Since I have a UPS on my modem/router and dish hopper they don’t go down. My work laptop remains on but my monitor setup goes out until the solar/battery kicks back on.
“Battery will kick on within milliseconds of an outage so that Your lights and Your essential appliances on the critical load panels can continue undisturbed.”
I’m waiting on the contract documents but I think it is a go. The battery and most components are LG, the wifi controller is some other brand, I think the link below is the unit, so $5k delivered with tax, plus whatever the rest of the hardware costs, looks like a really solid setup.
Looks like it’s time for new gutters. The new porch needs them, and we have one that leaks… it drips right where you exit the back door. Fantastic, and doubly fun when it’s winter and it puts a sheet of ice on the back steps.
I had little clue as to what they might cost, first quote is $4,300 for 6" gutters, all new downspouts (except one antique one we will keep, tyvm), and the leaf guard things. How are you all feeling about leaf guards? I’d never had them, and I had gotten used to cleaning gutters. But here, despite having several huge trees, they never clog. I cleaned them two years ago and there was very little debris in them.
Re: the backup battery for my house. I found a copy of the contract online, looks as expected. The third party that does the install came out, took some pics, said no problem. And then they delivered all of the hardware, it’s sitting in my basement. Scheduled install for March 20, said it would take the better part of a day and I won’t have power here and there.
But my utility never sent me a contract to sign. I called them, spoke to someone who said she would follow up, that was four days ago.
178’, based on Google it’s a bit high. The roof isn’t huge, but there is a dormer with a 15’ gutter, plus 50’ of gutter for the porch, and a 24x24 detached garage.
