Sorry, but incorrect. I heat with gas. My power usage is highest in summer. I never use grid power. With the Powerwall I don’t even dip into the grid at night in mid-December. My power bill is solely a fee. $10 per month.
Some not insignificant ifs there. But you're still buying and using gas and that going to cost who knows what in the future. The hope was that the EV and PowerShare (if they ever enable it) could help get through a random cloudy day but it's not going to do a lot if you're in the winter and you've got several weeks where your productions very low. Even if you're using gas for heating Maybe you can calculate your array to being a little smaller but you're still producing way more electricity than you need in the summer. For more and more folks you're gonna get next to nothing for that extra electricity that you're producing. Hopefully battery and solar will get so good and so cheap it'll that it won't be an issue but then more and cities and utilities will require you to be connected and pay a flat rate no matter what and that rate will just keep going up.
I'm glad you're heating with gas but that doesn't change everything. It's great if you can somehow never use utility power but I'm guessing it's going to happen at least sometimes like when you have a Powerwall 3 and it shuts down for a day or two to recalibrate or an inverter goes down etc. If those are the only times great. I'm glad your monthly fee is currently only $10 but other folks already fees two or three times that amount and it's only going to keep going up.
I don't understand your objection to having more production than you need during some seasons in order to create independence from the electrical grid for the entire year. More solar than you need during the sunny seasons is the way. If you size the system to meet your needs during the cloudiest, shortest days, there is no downside to producing more electricity than you need the rest of the year. That would be like saying you should never build a dam that requires the water to be diverted around the generators during the rainy season. Dams do this all the time when it rains too much. The generators are sized without worrying that they can't process all the water year round. Please explain why this is a problem.
Who cares if you can't use every kWh the system is capable of producing (when you don't need the electricity anyway)? The point is, you can reach your goal of total grid independence. I used to have a property with unmetered water, I could use as much as I wanted for the same monthly price. Do you think I had to leave all my taps running 24/7 just so i could get my money's worth? Of course not. You use what you need and shut off the water when you don't need it. Or, how about sizing the number of bedrooms in your house to accommodate your grandkids when they visit? Do you fret that those bedrooms go unused 9/10ths of the time or are you happy that your grandkids have a place to stay when they visit? How about buying a car that can seat 5 or 6 people when it generally only needs to accomodate 1 or 2 people? Do you refuse to go grocery shopping until you can fill every seat (since you paid for a car that big)? We size a lot of things for peak use. It seems you just want to throw up non-sensical objections. More solar than you can use during most of the year is a good problem to have.
It's nonsensical to worry about not having 100% reliability. Even the grid is not 100% reliable. Imagine you have an off-grid house in the woods. You want electricity but it's going to cost $10K to run a utility line in. Would you say, "Well that sounds great, but what am I going to do when there's a power outage? No way, Jose, if the utility line is not 100% reliable, then I don't want it!". It's a ridiculous way to think.
Under a more reasonable system sure but there's been some bait and switch going on. If you just want to buy a bunch of hardware so you can say you're off grid cool. Some folks don't have the room for enough solar to be completely off grid and produce way more power than they need during the summer (and not receive any credits for it) just so they can squeak by during the winter.
Oh, I didn't understand you were talking about making money. I thought you were saying it wouldn't work. How much money you make/save depends mostly upon the rules and rates of your utility. My utility has net metering and doesn't charge any fees for that. Even though we have relatively cheap electricity, solar is totally worth it and will pay off relatively quickly in most scenarios.
Not just about making money making but making dropping 20-30 grand or more make a little more sense.
thanks! What about the future scenario of PW3 and Cybertruck both backup the house?
We are just waiting to see if and when they enable PowerShare. I don't know if sharing to grid will be something different to wait for.
That is one concern that I have, they will enable it but you will not be able to configure it in any way other than if, you have no solar, no battery, and the power goes out, only then will it begin to take power from the EV.
Agreed. If I would have a large power outage, I would like to have the ability to use the truck to fill the PWs and then the PWs power the house while I go fill up the truck at a supercharger that has power.
Buy a hot tub or swim spa...I just wish I had somewhere else for the power to go.
