I am on Tesla Electric here in Texas they created their own electric company because we have electric choice in a majority of the state. Here they pay $400 per power wall per year, but they get to use 75% of the power wall. Basically, they manage the power wall. If you have four of them that was Probably quite expensive! How have they held up over the six years?
Those panels have a pretty high degradation rate, but they are pretty cheap so…
Would be nice if we had our pick of electric companies but we don't. There is a plan here from our utility company (PG&E) to manage my Powerwalls also but I didn't buy them for that. I bought them for me and I will manage them. I like Tesla's Virtual Power Plant plan as you can opt in or out at anytime. Yes they were expensive but not as much as they probably are now. I paid $6700 each. They have been flawless. Never a hiccup. They are always connected to Wi-Fi, alert me when grid power is down, informs me how long the home will be powered for. I like the StormWatch feature that monitors the weather and charges them to 100% then keeps them on standby backup mode in case we loose power. They just do their job and everything is seamless. It's the favorite addition to my home.
I have one Powerwall 3 so I don’t have that much backup capacity I have been thinking about adding either another Powerwall 3 or they have come out with the extra batteries you can hook up to the powerwall 3(The PW3 has the inverter built in so they came out with just the battery with no inverter supposedly $1000 less but I think more than $6700)
We got hit with snow here in North Texas. About 5 inches so far which is not common at all. My panels were covered just like yours but I still pulled in 14KWh's today. Not great but considering it was really cloudy and this was all from the backside of my panels and reflective light I will say its pretty impressive. Batteries are at 50% right now so we should make it through the night without pulling from the grid. I plan to sweep them off in the morning tomorrow because we are going to have another cloudy day and the snow is not going anywhere.My garage has a separate meter and load center, not connected to my home. The garage roof can only hold 12 solar panels, I wish it could have more, but its geometry has restrictions. It's been online a little over one year and It is grid tied with Net metering. No battery storage in the garage, other than my truck. Only have the garage door opener, some lights and tools in the garage. No other loads, like in a house. In the past year of operating, it generated about 5000kwh of power. I figure that is about 10,000 free miles of driving for the year. The system cost around $15,000 to get installed, and less the 30% tax credit, a net cost around $10,000. My truck's efficiency is around 2 miles per khw of power, year round. That is like 10000 free miles of driving or about $2500 in gasoline. I figure this will be paid off in four years. Right now the roof is covered in snow and not generating any electricity. In the summer it works really well.
So we also have a Chevy BOLT EUV which we use unless we want to go on a road trip. I use about 20% of the battery at night from the PPO, but I can’t get my HIS to work. If I could make that work, I could power my entire home between the two systems. 9.6 kw from PPO, and 9.6 kw from the HIS. I can run the AC on the PPO with my soft start, but not all my other loads, which is why I need my HIS to work.
is this where you get your batteries too?
Yes it is. If you get some and can have them indoors I recommend the eg4 indoor battery. It’s 14.3kwh. They have a weatherproof outdoor version as well but it’s overkill if you have it in the house or in a garage.
I did it all myself with the help of a friend who is a master electrician. He took care of the transfer switch and 200 amp disconnect from the meter that we had to add. Everything else I did on my own. However, any master electrician should be able to handle this. After I watched my friend do it I realized how easy it was. The scariest part was hooking up the 200 amp fused disconnect. This required pulling the meter and rewiring.
