It's funny that this thread popped back up. I had a couple of issues with power outages after I last posted . This lead to some research via a relative of mine in the management side of a power company. He basically said that I should not bank on power prices being the same in a couple of years as their projections on Fuel prices plus the added market of EV's etc had shown massive increases are coming and wont be going away.
A few days later I started to research going solar and getting enough equipment that I could go off the grid, but would start with enough battery power to cut only 50% of my energy bill. Due to the panels needing to be on the roof two stories up I needed an Installer for that and a certified electrician for the final hookup to the Grid.
Everything else from Inverter Installation, Batteries, Trunking and wiring I decided I would do myself during the Covid down time.
Three months later it was all done and I now have 10.2KW of solar on my roof and 21Kw of Lithium Iron Phosphate batteries Installed. I was always a staunch opponent against solar because the prices made no sense but with the massive price drops in solar equipment and with these new kind of LFP batteries it now makes a lot of sense. My batteries have an expected 14 year lifespan with over 6000 full recharge and discharge cycles.
I decided to go first class with the Inverter and bought a Sol-Ark 12K unit. It has a 4ms response time to blackouts so my whole house is literally on a huge UPS. I cannot even tell when a power outage has happened! I can also program it as to when the batteries take over powering the house at night.
I can run everything in my House including the AC's\Heat Pumps from 10pm to 7:30am on battery and the Sun is just up enough at that time to take over powering the House and start recharging the batteries. By 11:30am the batteries are typically recharged and the remaining solar is just powering the house and heating hot water. I am currently 75% off the Grid and only use Utility power between 5pm and 10pm.
If I get another 10Kw more of batteries I will be totally off the Grid and since my system is designed to handle 50KWh of batteries so I could go even further if needed.
Conclusion:
Well I must admit it brings a smile to my face when I see all the houses down the road are in darkness while mine is lit up and we did not realize their was an outage until someone looked outside. I have cut my electric bill down to a very small sum and I feel a lot better going into Hurricane season. Also it's pretty cool to crank up the AC in the day and know that those Hot cloudless days outside are actually allowing me to cool my house even more and for free.
I just got a recent electric bill and noticed another big price hike on it for fuel charges.
I suspect that given all that is going on and all that is to come this is going to be a very worthwhile investment.
Lastly don't believe all the stuff you hear. I can tell you for a fact that if you put up 10Kw of solar Panels you will get nearly 10Kw out of them if the sun is shinning on them. Even on a cloudy I get enough power to keep the house running and charge the batteries. It has to be those extremely low lying dark clouds passing by that will totally kill the solar power.
As for Prices, that is also not 100% accurate. You can spend anywhere from $10K to $40K and get very comparable systems in performance. It all depends on do you want top of the line equipment or do you want budget equipment.
Batteries are by far the most expensive part of the system. I can buy 5.1KWh Lithium Iron Phosphate battery packs anywhere from $3500 to $1500 both with a 10 Year warranty. The difference is I trust the $3500 one a lot more and I know the company will be around in 10+ years.
