My Goal: to never pay for charging (Solar) -- my automation process

[linuxgangster]

One idea that comes to mind. I could automate if fordpass_ignitionStatus OFF for 5 minutes then lock the doors if they are currently unlocked. I could also setup reminders to schedule service at certain intervals. Although this may already happen with the app (I have only had the truck for a little over a week)

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[chl]

Nice to have that independence from the Texas grid which from all the news reports over the years seems to be pretty terrible.

I know you have calculated a return on initial investment, but another cost down the road you should consider is the cost of replacement of the batteries. Even if they are not stressed by too high a depth of discharge (DoD should be limited to no more than 50% for longest life), heat, and so forth, they still have a limited useful lifetime.

Lets say after 10years they still have 70% capacity - is that adequate to meet your electricity needs? I think that is something to consider down the road.

On the positive side, the downward trend in Li battery prices has returned, so absent some unexpected event (PANDEMIC), replacing them will be cheaper when the time comes than the initial purchase was.

I weighed the pros and cons of a solar system here in Northern Virginia with and without batteries. Since net metering is available, and the grid here is very reliable, and batteries are a bit pricey right now, and have a fixed useful lifespan, I am leaning towards a no battery system.

Even with two EVs, a 2012 Nissan Leaf and a 2023 Lightning, our budget electric bill is $155 per month. We have a time-of-day home and EV program rate, and charge the EVs between 1am and 5am at between 5 and 6 cents per kWh depending on whether it is the summer rate (mid April to mid October) or winter rate (mid October to mid April).

I switched to a hybrid water heater (payback for that was about 2-1/2 years in reduced electricity usage), CFLs and then LEDs in all the lights (pay back in less that 2 months), added extra insulation, and gas filled double pane windows to the house. All of those things cut our electric bill substantially. Also got a high efficiency gas furnace which cut the gas bill substantially as well as reducing carbon emissions (pay back was less than 2 years). Energy Star appliances as well. It all adds up.

I can see the cost-benefit analysis being positive with battery storage where the utility rates are high, the monthly bill is high, the grid is unreliable, or any/all of the above.

Of course, there are "externalities," as the economists like to call them, hidden costs - e.g., the pollution involved in electricity production by the utility and the health costs to society, etc. We all pay those hidden costs in the end, even though it is hard to put a $ number on them.

But by using net metering the system is reducing the amount of energy the utility has to generate through fossil fuels and thereby reduces carbon pollution in the aggregate.

 

[Scorpio3d]

I am in Texas as well. Live near Denton. We lucked out during that storm because we have propane so no damage or anything. I know so many people who were without power and heat for multiple days. Some of them came home when everything thawed to burst pipes. A friend of mine had over 60k in damages. This is also the reason I went with solar.

Yes, I was fortunate as well as I have natural gas actually a company in your area coserv!
I am over in Wylie area.- small world.
That is part of the reason I did the solar as well!

 

[linuxgangster]

I know you have calculated a return on initial investment, but another cost down the road you should consider is the cost of replacement of the batteries. Even if they are not stressed by too high a depth of discharge (DoD should be limited to no more than 50% for longest life), heat, and so forth, they still have a limited useful lifetime.

Lets say after 10years they still have 70% capacity - is that adequate to meet your electricity needs? I think that is something to consider down the road.

On the positive side, the downward trend in Li battery prices has returned, so absent some unexpected event (PANDEMIC), replacing them will be cheaper when the time comes than the initial purchase was.

LifPo4 batteries used for solar work way differently then say our EV's. When we are charging (unless you never do Fast charge) and discharging its happening at a way lower rate then with a EV. If I discharge my 50+ KWH batteries its done over a 24 hour period and that is worse case scenario. Most days I am taking them from 100% to around 40. A good quality LiFePo4 battery will have 80% capacity after 6000-8000 cycles.....and this is at 80% DOD. That 8000 cycle for me is going to take over 20 years. Is it realistic? I am not sure. In fact most people calculate battery builds with a 90% discharge because they figure calendar aging has more affect and realistically they would do best at 10 years or less.

Agree with you on the downward trend. All Lithium based batteries are cheap now. I think some of this maybe due to newer technologies that will be hitting the market in the next 10 years.

 

[IWIRE]

Hey everyone. I am new here. Been the owner of a 2023 Ford Lightning XLT for about 2 weeks now. Bought the truck used for a ridiculous deal after trading in my 2019 Ram 1500. Anyway, I purchased this vehicle with the idea that I never have to pay for charging. This is my first EV vehicle. In September I completed a major project to run my house off of Solar and rarely pull the grid. This setup was designed to also never sell back to the grid. I am not interested in getting pennies for my solar when I can put that excess in batteries. So with that said let me show you guys what I have:

EG4 18Kpv - This is my hybrid inventer. It can accept up to 21kw in Solar
14Kw of solar - This is actually getting expaned later this year with a Pergola I am building to hold an additional 4.5Kw of solar
4 x 14.3Kwh batteries - This is for a grand total of 57.2Kwh of storage. These batteries run my house overnight and also help on cloudy or raining days
Empria EVSE - I bought this EVSE because I was already running a Empria Vue to monitor my energy usage at the house
Home Assistant - For building automation
Solar Assistant - For monitoring my Solar setup

I have only ran the solar since September but I have a really good understanding of my usage. So far on most days the batteries are at 100% by 1:00PM. If we had a cloudy or rainy day the previous day I still can get them charged from 15% to 100% unless its another cloudy day. So far since we have set this system up (Sept) we have only had to pull around 250Kwh of power from the grid which is rougly $30. So as you can see I should have plenty of extra on most days to charge my Lightning.

Over the past few days I have been coding a automation for charging my truck with excess solar. Here is how it works.

Automation first checks if the EVSE is hooked up to the truck
Automation then checks my battery state of charge. If the state of charge is greater than 99% it then turns the EVSE on and sets it to a current of 6.
Automation then checks my battery power every 2 minutes. If the number is greater then 0 it raises the current by 2. It will continue to do this until the the battery power is less than 0.
Automation will run until the battery state of charge is 95%

It took me a few days of debugging this but I seem to have it working properly which is very exciting. Now all I have to do is plug my charger in and let the automation do its thing. It will also send me messages to my phone periodically letting me know when it starts and stops. I would love to also check the truck directly and send alerts to my phone about the trucks State of charge but it seems like Ford has made this difficult. If anyone is interested in my code just shoot me a PM. Will be happy to share it

I am located in the DFW area of Texas if anyone is interested in seeing my setup.

Attatched is a screenshot of my current production. As you can see its been cloudy so production is down.

Nice, I need the automation as now I manually put my excess solar (Emporia EVSE) in my Lightning or Bolt EUV, and then use the Lightning to run the house from about 4 PM till excess solar starts producing again the next day.

 

[Brons2]

At what we pay in Central Texas for electricity (Pedernales Co-Op) a solar system will never financially justify itself in the service lifetime of the panels. I'm on budget billing and it's around $130/mo. I've had quotes for solar+battery and it's been around $40K. Doing the math on those things yields a payback period of over 25 years.

While I like DIY, I'm 6'7", 300lbs and I'm never getting up on the roof. Installing somewhere else besides the roof is not really an option, we live in a minimum lot line subdivision. If I moved to the country and bought land and I could do a ground based install, then maybe I'd DIY.

Of course, if I wanted to justify it by saying ERCOT is unreliable and I need to be my own power company, that would be another thing, and not totally out of the question.

 

[Sirkillz]

ROI is roughly 6-7 years with the amount we use in electricity...and if you equate the savings from moving to a EV its obviously less since I no longer pay for gas and charge for free. I am saving about $2100 a year on gas. Plus electric prices are always going up

rm -r gasPrices

 

[Scorpio3d]

At what we pay in Central Texas for electricity (Pedernales Co-Op) a solar system will never financially justify itself in the service lifetime of the panels. I'm on budget billing and it's around $130/mo. I've had quotes for solar+battery and it's been around $40K. Doing the math on those things yields a payback period of over 25 years.

While I like DIY, I'm 6'7", 300lbs and I'm never getting up on the roof. Installing somewhere else besides the roof is not really an option, we live in a minimum lot line subdivision. If I moved to the country and bought land and I could do a ground based install, then maybe I'd DIY.

Of course, if I wanted to justify it by saying ERCOT is unreliable and I need to be my own power company, that would be another thing, and not totally out of the question.

If you are in a co-op, you should not really be dealing with ERCOT?? But also don’t have choice!
I know the math doesn’t necessarily make sense at current electricity rates and I am not in a co-op in North Texas so I don’t know how their rates have changed over the last few years, but ERCOT/Oncor certainly has increased!

 

[linuxgangster]

Nice, I need the automation as now I manually put my excess solar (Emporia EVSE) in my Lightning or Bolt EUV, and then use the Lightning to run the house from about 4 PM till excess solar starts producing again the next day.

If you have Home Assistant and want my automation code shoot me a message. Should be fairly simple if you have a inverter that is capable of MQTT

 

[Brons2]

If you are in a co-op, you should not really be dealing with ERCOT?? But also don’t have choice!
I know the math doesn’t necessarily make sense at current electricity rates and I am not in a co-op in North Texas so I don’t know how their rates have changed over the last few years, but ERCOT/Oncor certainly has increased!

ERCOT is the grid for 90% of Texas. Pedernales doesn't have it's own power generation and is mainly using LCRA, the Lower Colorado River Authority. LCRA operates the Fayetteville, TX plant which has 8(I think) natural gas turbines. But anytime demand exceeds what LCRA and other local operators generate, we are reliant on ERCOT to meet those demands that are above and beyond supply. Just like every other municipal, commercial and cooperative power source in Texas.

 

[Brons2]

Nice, I need the automation as now I manually put my excess solar (Emporia EVSE) in my Lightning or Bolt EUV, and then use the Lightning to run the house from about 4 PM till excess solar starts producing again the next day.

Wow. And you are in Texas, which means you're running AC just as much as we are in the summertime. How much of the Lightning's battery does this use? What if you need to use the truck?

 

[markboris]

Shane, your system (solar, batteries and EVSE) is similar to mine! I've had solar for 8 years this month and 6 years ago decided it was time to add storage and getting batteries was a game changer. 16.5Kw of solar, 4 Powerwall 2's and 2 Emporia EVSE's with Vue energy monitoring system. I don't have Home Assistant or any other automated software. ROI for the solar system was 3 years ago and the Powerwalls was last year.

BEV's charge on excess solar or from the Powerwalls and rarely from the grid. When there is no solar, the Powerwalls run the home. They are usually charged by noon or 1:00 PM at the latest depending on weather and any excess solar goes back to the grid. I do use grid power when the weather has been crappy for several days in a row but my solar export offsets this and I always have a credit at the end of each year so never have to pay the utility company for power. This year I'm going to join Tesla's Virtual Power Plant program. Had I done this last year, would have earned $819 according to Tesla's estimate based on my system.

The Tesla app gives me a yearly report. This is last year:

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