Don't believe the small Solar panel charging lies!

[gtaus]

I work on a tiny island, Lana'i, in Hawaii. They have fairly frequent power outages. Also, it has the affordable rate of $0.42 per kWh!

Location matters. I live in rural northern Minnesota, and in 30+ years of living here, we have never had more than a few hours of power outage. My normal grid rate is about $0.12 per kWh, but we also have Peak-Power grid for heating the house, water, dryer, etc... which is at $0.067 per kWh.

The electric company can control the Peak-Power and shut it off when necessary to supply more power to the normal grid. That seldom happens. Also, they can control whether it's the dryer, hot water heater, or main house furnace that they turn off and for how long. For example, if you used slab heat, they might turn off the Peak-Power on the slab heat for an hour, but you would probably never notice it as the slab retains heat for longer than that. We have had a night or two this winter where the dryer power was turned off for a few hours after work and did not come back on again until later in the night. Not a big deal for us and certainly worth the wait to save about half the cost of drying our clothes with normal priced electricity.

But I can understand your situation. When I lived in Naples, Italy, the price of electricity was about 5X our US rates. That was in the early 1990s. I had to buy a $300 smart battery backup system for my computers to prevent damage during those frequent brown outs. It would sense when the voltage dropped to unsafe levels and the battery would kick in to supply the correct voltage. That battery backup system was always kicking in to boost the voltage.

I guess high electric costs go hand in hand with the electric company's inability to provide constant reliable power.

Just had to share that because in his case/location/cost I think it's worth it to have the bad-butt solar system.

Again, I am not opposed to solar power for those that need it. I just was commenting on how a small solar panel setup would not be a good investment for me.

He actually calculated that the equivalent house battery would've been more expensive than just buying a truck!

Yeah, I like the idea of using your EV to provide short term power for the house. Great if you can charge the EV on cheaper off-peak electricity rates and then use that stored energy to power your house in an emergency.

I checked into those Tesla power wall battery systems, and the numbers, for me, had a payback of over 25 years. Again, I'd be somewhere in my 90's just to break even. Not an investment I would make at this stage of my life. But, having the battery storage in an EV that you could also use to drive, that would make more sense to me.