quote:

Power costs some $0.23 here

That is double my cost.

I can't imagine what we use at night. Hot tub, AC, ceiling fans, alarm system, security cameras, internet equipment, power bricks for the laptops, and so forth.

quote:

Originally posted by SIGfourme:
I thought the OP went solar.
Battery banks have come down in price.
You have the threshold for the smallest battery- 500.
Tesla batteries are not cheap. An Invertor just died on my solar system. Replaced by the local company yesterday. I asked about a battery bank- he thought the cost was around $13k for a battery. ROI is not there based on Skins numbers.

When you say battery banks have comedown in price, what kind of battery banks are you referring to? I just replaced our battery bank in May after getting a little over fifteen years out of a bank that should have given twelve and a half. Rolls-Surrette 2-KS-33PS (1837 amp hour 2 volt batteries) x 24. The cost was just over double what it was fifteen years ago for batteries that had outlasted their projected life. Using their projected life and the projected life of the lithium ion batteries that the various battery sales outfits were trying to sell me because they couldn’t get what I wanted for at least six to eight weeks, the lithium ion solutions were 12-15% more per cycle for the same amount of usable power. It gets a little complicated because you can discharge the LI down to 20% (using 80% each cycle) while you don’t want to go below 50% (using 50% each cycle) on lead acids. This allows you to install a nominally smaller LI bank for the same amount of usable amps.

Lithium Ion batteries have come down, but they are still more expensive than lead acid batteries and lead acid batteries have slightly more than doubled in the last fifteen years.

quote:

Originally posted by Skins2881:

quote:

Power costs some $0.23 here

That is double my cost.

You don’t live in Kommiefornia.

I don’t want to know my cost. There’s no meter reader coming round the house and now monthly bill, but I stings a bit when I need to replace a battery bank or get an inverter overhauled…

I looked at Tesla again, they now bundle the powerwalls with panels, guess nobody was buying them, so Tesla is no longer a viable option.

They want to put in three walls at $23,500 which almost doubles the panel cost they suggest. I don't want or need battery walls at $8K each, just want panels.

What would have been a $33K system is now a $56K system, for that I can get a 20kW roof system that will cover 100% of current use and I don't have to solarize the house insulation, windows or upgrade to a higher seer ac which we
would need to do in order to lower daily kW to meet Teslas 17kW max system.

Wonder how long before Tesla reverses this marketing method. Since you can stay on grid at night and the utility here will hold credits from overage production batteries are not needed. That was the "pitch" go off grid with batteries for night use.

Which of course would cause more battery recharge cycles, causing decreased life.

quote:

Originally posted by Skins2881:

quote:

Power costs some $0.23 here

That is double my cost.

Double my cost at peak in the summer and triple my cost in the winter.

Sorry guys, I misspoke.

My rate is $0.27 per kWh.

Off peak. Peak is $0.43.

My bill has a "baseline" usage credit. The first however many kWh are free, provided you pay your connection fee.

Basically, if you are low income and live in a small house or apartment you pay next to nothing for your power. Subsidized, of course, by people who don't live in small houses or apartments and have to pay jacked up rates to provide everyone a baseline credit.

Literally a few of us are paying the bill for everyone else.

One of my reasons for going solar. If I get my usage down into net zero or close to net zero, then I pay my connection fee like everyone else, but no more than that.

quote:

Originally posted by Aeteocles:
Whoa. So they scheduled a visit two weeks out and shut off your solar until the service visit? Was it a regular service visit, or was there something wrong that needed fixing?

System went down. No production. Service appt is 2 weeks after system went down. Not sure exactly what's wrong yet.

quote:

Originally posted by konata88:

quote:

Originally posted by Aeteocles:
Whoa. So they scheduled a visit two weeks out and shut off your solar until the service visit? Was it a regular service visit, or was there something wrong that needed fixing?

System went down. No production. Service appt is 2 weeks after system went down. Not sure exactly what's wrong yet.

Ouch. Did you check all the breakers and switches, or are you just going to wait rather than risk burning the house down?

quote:

Originally posted by IndianaMike:
Educate ME !
How do i find this out .

My utility company has an online portal that allows me to look at my usage broken down in an hourly graph.

My house has one of those cellular/radio connected meters that provides continuous data to the utility. There are no meter reader people here, all houses here have these connected meters and the utility collects the usage data wirelessly.

Because the meter reports back wirelessly, the utility can provide fairly granular usage data such as daily and hourly use.

If you don't have a connected meter, you could figure it out manually. You can get up an hour earlier than everyone else does and just read your meter and then come back an hour later and take another reading. The difference would be your usage while everyone is asleep

quote:

Originally posted by slosig:

quote:

Originally posted by SIGfourme:
I thought the OP went solar.
Battery banks have come down in price.
You have the threshold for the smallest battery- 500.
Tesla batteries are not cheap. An Invertor just died on my solar system. Replaced by the local company yesterday. I asked about a battery bank- he thought the cost was around $13k for a battery. ROI is not there based on Skins numbers.

When you say battery banks have comedown in price, what kind of battery banks are you referring to? I just replaced our battery bank in May after getting a little over fifteen years out of a bank that should have given twelve and a half. Rolls-Surrette 2-KS-33PS (1837 amp hour 2 volt batteries) x 24. The cost was just over double what it was fifteen years ago for batteries that had outlasted their projected life. Using their projected life and the projected life of the lithium ion batteries that the various battery sales outfits were trying to sell me because they couldn’t get what I wanted for at least six to eight weeks, the lithium ion solutions were 12-15% more per cycle for the same amount of usable power. It gets a little complicated because you can discharge the LI down to 20% (using 80% each cycle) while you don’t want to go below 50% (using 50% each cycle) on lead acids. This allows you to install a nominally smaller LI bank for the same amount of usable amps.

Lithium Ion batteries have come down, but they are still more expensive than lead acid batteries and lead acid batteries have slightly more than doubled in the last fifteen years.

My battery bank is 16yrs old. Unighy II AGM 1000AH 24x2V. They're starting to show their age, will be replacing in the next year or three. I too have compared cycle cost, capacity..... More then likely I'll buy AGM or FLA batteries.

A friend installed 7 Simplify LI 3.8KW @ 48V, 14KW of solar, offgrid system. He's given me access to online real time data. The LI are a completely different animal compared to FLA or AGM's for sure. The LI's can be charged at a very high rate. Based on my battery bank and others I've installed I believe AGM/FLA behave well with a charge rate of C/15-20. Whereas the charge rate of the LI is below C/2, I see that on this system, how slowly the voltage rises with big amperage. With the cost of solar panels so cheap I can see a system with a smallish LI battery bank and large solar array. No longer need the storage because of the size of the array and charge rate of LI. We use 8KW a day. Two day LI battery discharging down to 20%, 6-3.8KW LI batteries. Max charge on each battery 35 amps. 6x35=210 amps or about 11KW of solar. With a 8KW daily load guessing this would do quite well here in sunny Colorado. Smaller LI battery bank/large array may very well be the future of offgrid.

Sorry for the drift OP!

Got a Tesla Advocate on the line, They have decided to require a minimum of two Powerwalls at $18K with Panel purchases from now on.

Tesla has incorporated the inverter into the powerwalls, and connected it to the interweb weather system, so it will know if it needs to fast charge your batteries for possible upcoming outages, or brownouts. None of which is valuable well, or worth $17K.

Maybe they sell mostly in CA, where power isn't as stable as it is in the rest of the USA

Elon makes more money than me, so maybe he knows something, but for now, Tesla is out, what was an affordable (7 year roi) is now 14 years and while we were not going the payment route, the system cost per month is $490, more than I pay on average now by $100 a month to the grid company.

Why anyone would do a Tesla system now, double the cost, higher future replacement costs when an inverter takes a dive and you need a new $8K wall to get it running is beyond me

quote:

Originally posted by IndianaMike:
Educate ME !
How do I find this out .

Someone going to answer this?

quote:

Originally posted by bald1:

quote:

Originally posted by IndianaMike:
Educate ME !
How do I find this out .

Someone going to answer this?

Look for the meter on the side of your house.

before going to bed, note the numbers and the time.

suppose it says 5437 as an example. THis is in kWH. Note the time as 11 PM.

when you wake up, read it again, and note the number reading and note the number of hours from the last reading. Suppose it's 7 AM, therefore 8 hours.

suppose it says 5443 in the morning. Then you used 5443-5437 = 6 kWH. But divide by the number hours since the last reading.

supppose 8 hours between readings, then your answer is 6 / 8 = 0.75 kW but 0.75 kW is 750 watts. So your at rest power would be 750 watts averaged over the course of the night.

At any given time your refrigerator or A/C, and other things may kick on or off making the number different for any instant but over 8 hours gives you a good average.

does this make sense???

quote:

Originally posted by bald1:

quote:

Originally posted by IndianaMike:
Educate ME !
How do I find this out .

Someone going to answer this?

I did, a few posts back.

quote:

Originally posted by Aeteocles:

quote:

Originally posted by bald1:

quote:

Originally posted by IndianaMike:
Educate ME !
How do I find this out .

Someone going to answer this?

I did, a few posts back.

My sincere apologies.
I looked but quite obviously not deep enough as I missed it.
Damn but these senior moments are becoming much too frequent!

No apology needed, Radioman's answer was better anyway.

quote:

Originally posted by HRK:
Got a Tesla Advocate on the line, They have decided to require a minimum of two Powerwalls at $18K with Panel purchases from now on.

Tesla has incorporated the inverter into the powerwalls, and connected it to the interweb weather system, so it will know if it needs to fast charge your batteries for possible upcoming outages, or brownouts. None of which is valuable well, or worth $17K.

Maybe they sell mostly in CA, where power isn't as stable as it is in the rest of the USA

Elon makes more money than me, so maybe he knows something, but for now, Tesla is out, what was an affordable (7 year roi) is now 14 years and while we were not going the payment route, the system cost per month is $490, more than I pay on average now by $100 a month to the grid company.

Why anyone would do a Tesla system now, double the cost, higher future replacement costs when an inverter takes a dive and you need a new $8K wall to get it running is beyond me

I think this will change.

Tesla's solar installs have been backlogged since that Texas blizzard that knocked out power. They've been playing catch-up since then, first prioritizing installs for people with Powerwall orders, then raising their prices for solar only installs, then requiring a Powerwall purchase with solar for new orders.

I got a lot of this from my installation adviser because, if you recall, I had originally put a deposit down for my system back in July of 2020, but didn't proceed with the install until spring of this year. My installation rep would periodically call and get me to start my project and let me know that their backlog was getting worse because demand was growing while at the same time they were experiencing supply chain issues.


I imagine that once the backlog is cleared up and the semi-conductor shortage resolves itself, Tesla will go back to solar only installs.

quote:

Originally posted by Aeteocles:
So here's my thinking.

If I can shave off 100 watts off of the house's baseline use, that'd be 100 x 24hrs x 364 days, or some 876 kilowatts a year.

Power costs some $0.23 here, so a theoretical $200 in savings annually.

But yes, I'm on solar now. It's been generating between 45kwh to 53kwh a day, which exceeds our daily average usage on most days (so far we've only gone over on days where daytime temps exceed 90 degrees) and should theoretically exceed our annual usage by a margin of 20%.

Part of my plan was to allow more AC use and get an electric or plug-in hybrid car to use up that excess margin.

So, yes, at this point the 500watts of vampire draw makes no actual difference to me--but down the road, a 100 watt savings 24/hrs a day equates to 3650 miles driven in something like a Tesla. That's not nothing.

quote:

Originally posted by Aeteocles:
Sorry guys, I misspoke.

My rate is $0.27 per kWh.

Off peak. Peak is $0.43.

I guess at those rates it may be worth going with smart power strips. Compatible with Apple HomeKit and Google Home so you can program to turn on and off. I don't have their power strips, but have their smart plugs which I really like combined with their iPhone app. Also, $8 off coupon right now so $24.99 for a smart power strip.

The smart power strip will save all of the wear and tear Jesse/skins posted about from constant plugging/unplugging.