Something people forget on their cash flow evaluations is that if you have net metering, installing batteries has an opportunity cost involved, you are not just charging your battery, you have loss the money of selling the energy to the grid instead, so you could see this cash flow as buying electricity to grid at your injections' price for charging your batteries, this destroys your battery system's saving profits. Batteries only makes sense if you don't have a grid nearby, or if you cannot instal a back-up diesel generator (like in small hotels, due the noise, as example).
California is not a net metering state. California has net billing - your excess solar electricity gets you about 20% of retail rates. This is under the new NEM 3 regulations that govern most of the largest CA utilities. LADWP has true Net Metering but none of the other big electric companies.
iN AFRICA you have to buy a battery because the GRID is unreliable. Every week it goes off at least once, and sometimes it lasts several hours. BATTERY for us isn't just cheaper because we can use solar but it's absolutely necessary
So first this is a great video. I was forced to go battery for multiple reasons. These included power at 50 cents per KWH, power that went off about once a month or more and poor quality power the voltage alone would vary between 98 and 143 Volts. So in real terms I didn't have a choice. I have 3 batteries with 56 KWHs LFP, cuz my first battery caught fire. I can be off grid for up to three days of low usage, 1 with high usage. Given I live at 17 degrees north latitude even on an overcast day I will get some level of charging. During a sunny day it generally charges before noon. But being off the grid is not just about the batteries which you need a few of, it also means generally a second inverter because the inverter becomes the bottleneck from the batteries. In my case the draw is capped at 8kws per inverter, which for most things is not bad, but if multiple major appliances/pumps kick on it can overload and turn the power off for 30 seconds. Getting the second inverter allows me to pull 16 kws which is more than I could draw at this point. Plus there is a lot more electrical that has to be put in and if you are not doing this yourself it gets expensive FAST. I am also different in that I am OFF THE GRID 99% of the time. Only for very specific reasons do I even turn the grid on about once every 6 months for construction when I have 3x the normal amount of people in the house and use a lot of big tools like a smoke saw for concrete. Please before you decide to really go hard into solar and batteries because the real costs of doing a full system with everything you need will probably be closer to 100k. So unless your a millionaire with money to burn this is not a simple decision. But if done right can save or make you a lot of money. Just in my initial set up which I did myself the cost was about 50k, but the savings are more than 12k per year. So the pay back is rather short. But that is due to high costs of energy in the area, a bad grid and very high solar production. Every place and house is different.
Thanks for sharing your experience and insights. It's definitely not a one-size-fits-all solution. My advice for battery backup is go for an essentials backup solution; no 240 volt appliances, just the regular fridge freezer lights TV internet and anything 120 volts. That is usually possible to do with one 13.5kwh battery or two if you want extended backup. That would keep costs down to below 50k for solar plus battery fully installed. If you go DIY I'd guess you could do it at 20 or 25kw. Again costs depend on the installer. There are a lot of price gougers out there who would charge you 70k for the same setup. And thanks again for your comprehensive comment. Good stuff.
3 วันที่ผ่านมา
You must be my neighbor because we have about the same situation.. Brown outs every week, power outs every month and a deregulated grid at times charge the heck out of you per KWH.. We lost over a 10 year period of time a fridge, freezer, washer motor, dryer motor, 2x furnace motors, well pump, 3x computer power supplies, 1 two way radio power supply, 2 TV sets and a few other odd and end things because they were running when we had brown outs and we didn't notice or we were not home at the time.. So the deluxe solar inverter I have can build up the brown power by adding power from the battery bank, act as a UPS and just take over or supply power when the solar panels are making it and the battery is over 60% charged.. The cost of all those damaged/destroyed home electronics has cost us close to $10k over those years so having a system that cost me $18k will save me the loss for decades to come.. Paying $600 a year for grid power instead of $1,500 puts $900 toward the installation cost so in 10 years of ownership it will pay for itself..
3 วันที่ผ่านมา
Running out and firing up the generator and switching over is something I will not miss.. This was the before the solar system solution which drove me to solar.. They now have voltage good/bad devices that can be installed between the meter panel and the main panel which will just shut off the power if you get half off or brown conditions for about $40 which I see as a good safety device for homeowners that are OK with being off and saving the home electronics/appliances..
@@MySolarHomeUSA Or just pump the battery up with a 3kW generator when power outages last long enough for that to be a problem. If the generator will never be used for anything other than charging a 48V battery, you could even re-wire it for direct 48-60Vdc output to skip DC-AC-DC conversion losses from using an inverter-generator.
Thank you Jon for this update. I hope you had a wonderful New Year. I live in a part of Texas that has quasi Net-Metering, it is close. I buy electricity at $.12/KWhr (plus delivery) and sell it at the same price. During the year I can accumulate up to $1,000 in credits. Here is the fine print, once I draw power at night I have to pay the delivery charge which is about $.047.KHwr. All in all, instead of have a $350-$500 per month summer bill, I get about $40-$45 and the winter is about $30 including the connection and delivery charges. I use EcoFlow for emergencies and looking at increasing my capacity for my main panel and bring in an inverter generator to charge the batteries when the power is out. Thank you for your work, there is a lot of movement in the area and I truly believe that the future of residential will be in these hybrid systems.
Thats good to know. I am working with someone in Texas who alerted me to the extra delivery charges. Effectively, the utility is buying your solar electricity at 7 cents. Not as good as full on net metering, but still a good deal. Thanks for sharing.
3 วันที่ผ่านมา
Be careful because new 2025 rules in several States lets the power company charge you both ways for grid transportation fees.. This will reduce that 1 to1 out and in to a point you may see zero benefit to pushing power onto the grid.. At that point battery storage will be the way to go especially with the price drop in LiFePo4 batteries for now.. Tariffs to be implemented in a month will raise prices on Chinese cells/batteries by 50% as all solar from China is already being taxed high..
Batteries make sense for several reasons, including inevitable and rapid shifts away from retail net metering, true energy independence, and backup power during grid down situations. Anyone selling solar that doesn’t have a viable battery option isn’t thinking about the long term needs of their clients beyond upfront savings.
You have a valid opinion and it is shared by many. However, the majority of homeowners are equally concerned about the financial benefits of going solar and they are likely to look a the battery with a more immediate lens of savings. Thanks for watching and commenting.
Thank you for being upfront about the batteries. They are nice to have and prices are coming down each year but like you said, not 100% needed. I wanted power back up security. In early 2024, I was quoted $30k+ for Emphase 5p 20kWh set up to go with my PV system. In the end, I passed. I have net metering, and 8 months out of the year I pay the $15 interconnection fee and that's it. The other 4 months, I use up my credits and pay less than I used till about March. Thats when my solar production kicks back up and I start banking credits. For power back up I went with larger Ecoflow products for those times power goes out (quite a few times a year in this area). For less than $20k I have 48kWh of home back up power. It's not automatic as I have to use an interlock and cable but in 3 minutes, I have my house up and running. Usually with load management I can get a day and half on batteries alone. As a power source, I have portable solar panels and also a portable gennie to supplement in case sun is an issue.
Excellent analysis and thanks for sharing your setup with my viewers. As prices comes down, we should be able to do your Ecoflow replacement with an Enphase or Telsa at the same prices you bought the Ecoflow. Everyone should be going solar.
Out of the US it's a lot cheaper too, I installed a 20kWh emphase system including solar for 10k euro's.
3 วันที่ผ่านมา
In my area of Northeast Ohio the minimum connect fee is $30 a month which is mostly deregulation taxes, State community security tax which gives free or reduced bills to disabled sick and elderly.. We also pay a privilege fee because we have solar and transmission line maintenance fee even though the power company will not repair our service drop or meter can for free or a reduced cost if they get damaged that insurance costs extra.. So we try our best to use that minimum power so we are not paying for nothing in the Summer.. Now you can get a factory made in a steel stackable box a 15kw 48v/52.2v battery for around $2,500 delivered to your door.. A bit over 5 years ago I paid over$3,500 for an 8 cel L-16 lead battery that had a useable capacity of barely 5kw.. This past Summer I built a 30kw LiFePo4 battery bank for a bit over $4k which has 5x the energy storage and I am very pleased with it from what I saw in a short time.. This Spring to Fall will be great because in the past during the longer days we had more power than we could use and it was wasted during the day and we would run out of battery at night.. Now I will even be able to heat hot water at night and run the washer and dryer..
just built an 8kwh battery for 350 usd lol. people who dont take the time to learn this stuff (which is all on youtube to free) get to pay the electricity tax. straight up lifepo4 cells are so cheap right now its insane, and all these companies are making a killing off people while people love to talk about their tax credits theyre getting
I agree. But, DIY skills are pretty rare. You are among a sliver of people who have the interest and the skillset to design and build your own energy storage systems. Remember, it only looks and feels easy for the folks who actually do it, like you. For the rest, it is very difficult and they have to go the route of getting it installed. Thanks for sharing.
3 วันที่ผ่านมา
I built a 30+ KW LiFePo4 battery bank for just over $4k out of EVE 300a cells which replaced an 8 cell L-16 lead acid battery bank.. All I can say is wow, 5x the storage and I can charge them at a higher rate which makes better use of the 7kwh x 7 hours my panels can produce in the Summer.. Set them up late Summer 2024 so I did not get their full punch but 2025 should be amazing and I look forward to those State minimum bills of $30.. They snuck through a law in Ohio that bans net meter, forces digital meters and a fee if you have solar as part of a deregulation of grid power.. The reason we have the big battery is because as rural grid customers we often suffer from brief to long brown outs or outages and having that battery online all the time means I don't have to run out and turn on the generator several times in a week for short bad grid events.. The large number of 5kw 12v batteries that have hit the market in the past 6 months is astounding.. Some series or parallel well and some do not depending on their built in BMS.. Have seen several people who have opened the plastic boxes done a series parallel scheme and replaced the cheap BMS with a better one that does 48v and built a monster battery with the bargain cells..
3 วันที่ผ่านมา
@@MySolarHomeUSA That is where the stackable 5kw or 15kw prebuilt boxes fill the gap, 48v 5kw boxes for under $1k and 15kw boxes for under $2.5k shipped to your door.. Then it is just a matter of running cables and connecting boxes.. If you can't do that then you pay an electrician or the solar installer to do it.. The cheapest route these days is the 5kw 12v batteries for about $200 each then wiring a bunch together to make any size battery you want.. I built my 30+kw 55v battery bank out of high grade EVE cells and JK BMS controllers because yes I built industrial control panels and installed my own solar setup..
they like to make money from solar good you can but the utolity is not your battery that is a left cheap idea for those who can buy and install solar but yes nice talking for selling solar panels but not the truth, if a other person have to run a generator is he allowed the power he is not using to feed in to utility?
Something people forget on their cash flow evaluations is that if you have net metering, installing batteries has an opportunity cost involved, you are not just charging your battery, you have loss the money of selling the energy to the grid instead, so you could see this cash flow as buying electricity to grid at your injections' price for charging your batteries, this destroys your battery system's saving profits.
Batteries only makes sense if you don't have a grid nearby, or if you cannot instal a back-up diesel generator (like in small hotels, due the noise, as example).
You make a good point about the opportunity cost of using battery storage instead of selling power to the grid.
3:10 you did not list California as a net metering state?
California is not a net metering state. California has net billing - your excess solar electricity gets you about 20% of retail rates. This is under the new NEM 3 regulations that govern most of the largest CA utilities. LADWP has true Net Metering but none of the other big electric companies.
@ Thanks. I have Solar and I do know that I am getting ripped off by the state for what they take and give in return.
iN AFRICA you have to buy a battery because the GRID is unreliable. Every week it goes off at least once, and sometimes it lasts several hours. BATTERY for us isn't just cheaper because we can use solar but it's absolutely necessary
Yes, with a an unreliable grid, a battery is a life saver. Thank you for watching.
So first this is a great video.
I was forced to go battery for multiple reasons. These included power at 50 cents per KWH, power that went off about once a month or more and poor quality power the voltage alone would vary between 98 and 143 Volts.
So in real terms I didn't have a choice. I have 3 batteries with 56 KWHs LFP, cuz my first battery caught fire. I can be off grid for up to three days of low usage, 1 with high usage. Given I live at 17 degrees north latitude even on an overcast day I will get some level of charging. During a sunny day it generally charges before noon. But being off the grid is not just about the batteries which you need a few of, it also means generally a second inverter because the inverter becomes the bottleneck from the batteries. In my case the draw is capped at 8kws per inverter, which for most things is not bad, but if multiple major appliances/pumps kick on it can overload and turn the power off for 30 seconds. Getting the second inverter allows me to pull 16 kws which is more than I could draw at this point. Plus there is a lot more electrical that has to be put in and if you are not doing this yourself it gets expensive FAST.
I am also different in that I am OFF THE GRID 99% of the time. Only for very specific reasons do I even turn the grid on about once every 6 months for construction when I have 3x the normal amount of people in the house and use a lot of big tools like a smoke saw for concrete.
Please before you decide to really go hard into solar and batteries because the real costs of doing a full system with everything you need will probably be closer to 100k. So unless your a millionaire with money to burn this is not a simple decision. But if done right can save or make you a lot of money. Just in my initial set up which I did myself the cost was about 50k, but the savings are more than 12k per year. So the pay back is rather short. But that is due to high costs of energy in the area, a bad grid and very high solar production. Every place and house is different.
Thanks for sharing your experience and insights. It's definitely not a one-size-fits-all solution.
My advice for battery backup is go for an essentials backup solution; no 240 volt appliances, just the regular fridge freezer lights TV internet and anything 120 volts. That is usually possible to do with one 13.5kwh battery or two if you want extended backup. That would keep costs down to below 50k for solar plus battery fully installed. If you go DIY I'd guess you could do it at 20 or 25kw.
Again costs depend on the installer. There are a lot of price gougers out there who would charge you 70k for the same setup. And thanks again for your comprehensive comment. Good stuff.
You must be my neighbor because we have about the same situation.. Brown outs every week, power outs every month and a deregulated grid at times charge the heck out of you per KWH.. We lost over a 10 year period of time a fridge, freezer, washer motor, dryer motor, 2x furnace motors, well pump, 3x computer power supplies, 1 two way radio power supply, 2 TV sets and a few other odd and end things because they were running when we had brown outs and we didn't notice or we were not home at the time.. So the deluxe solar inverter I have can build up the brown power by adding power from the battery bank, act as a UPS and just take over or supply power when the solar panels are making it and the battery is over 60% charged.. The cost of all those damaged/destroyed home electronics has cost us close to $10k over those years so having a system that cost me $18k will save me the loss for decades to come.. Paying $600 a year for grid power instead of $1,500 puts $900 toward the installation cost so in 10 years of ownership it will pay for itself..
Running out and firing up the generator and switching over is something I will not miss.. This was the before the solar system solution which drove me to solar.. They now have voltage good/bad devices that can be installed between the meter panel and the main panel which will just shut off the power if you get half off or brown conditions for about $40 which I see as a good safety device for homeowners that are OK with being off and saving the home electronics/appliances..
I think batteries are worth it because if the city shuts off the grid you can still have electricity with the battery
That is true, but only for a little bit. The batteries run out of power quickly unless you have solar panels to keep recharging them.
@@MySolarHomeUSA Who are these people buying a battery without panels?
@@TheSmiddy lots of them in my country. With current payback time of 5 years. Different earning model.
@@MySolarHomeUSA Or just pump the battery up with a 3kW generator when power outages last long enough for that to be a problem. If the generator will never be used for anything other than charging a 48V battery, you could even re-wire it for direct 48-60Vdc output to skip DC-AC-DC conversion losses from using an inverter-generator.
@@MySolarHomeUSAUkraina 😂
Thank you Jon for this update. I hope you had a wonderful New Year.
I live in a part of Texas that has quasi Net-Metering, it is close.
I buy electricity at $.12/KWhr (plus delivery) and sell it at the same price.
During the year I can accumulate up to $1,000 in credits.
Here is the fine print, once I draw power at night I have to pay the delivery charge which is about $.047.KHwr. All in all, instead of have a $350-$500 per month summer bill, I get about $40-$45 and the winter is about $30 including the connection and delivery charges.
I use EcoFlow for emergencies and looking at increasing my capacity for my main panel and bring in an inverter generator to charge the batteries when the power is out.
Thank you for your work, there is a lot of movement in the area and I truly believe that the future of residential will be in these hybrid systems.
Thats good to know. I am working with someone in Texas who alerted me to the extra delivery charges. Effectively, the utility is buying your solar electricity at 7 cents. Not as good as full on net metering, but still a good deal. Thanks for sharing.
Be careful because new 2025 rules in several States lets the power company charge you both ways for grid transportation fees.. This will reduce that 1 to1 out and in to a point you may see zero benefit to pushing power onto the grid.. At that point battery storage will be the way to go especially with the price drop in LiFePo4 batteries for now.. Tariffs to be implemented in a month will raise prices on Chinese cells/batteries by 50% as all solar from China is already being taxed high..
Batteries make sense for several reasons, including inevitable and rapid shifts away from retail net metering, true energy independence, and backup power during grid down situations. Anyone selling solar that doesn’t have a viable battery option isn’t thinking about the long term needs of their clients beyond upfront savings.
You have a valid opinion and it is shared by many. However, the majority of homeowners are equally concerned about the financial benefits of going solar and they are likely to look a the battery with a more immediate lens of savings. Thanks for watching and commenting.
Thank you for being upfront about the batteries. They are nice to have and prices are coming down each year but like you said, not 100% needed. I wanted power back up security. In early 2024, I was quoted $30k+ for Emphase 5p 20kWh set up to go with my PV system. In the end, I passed. I have net metering, and 8 months out of the year I pay the $15 interconnection fee and that's it. The other 4 months, I use up my credits and pay less than I used till about March. Thats when my solar production kicks back up and I start banking credits. For power back up I went with larger Ecoflow products for those times power goes out (quite a few times a year in this area). For less than $20k I have 48kWh of home back up power. It's not automatic as I have to use an interlock and cable but in 3 minutes, I have my house up and running. Usually with load management I can get a day and half on batteries alone. As a power source, I have portable solar panels and also a portable gennie to supplement in case sun is an issue.
Excellent analysis and thanks for sharing your setup with my viewers. As prices comes down, we should be able to do your Ecoflow replacement with an Enphase or Telsa at the same prices you bought the Ecoflow. Everyone should be going solar.
Out of the US it's a lot cheaper too, I installed a 20kWh emphase system including solar for 10k euro's.
In my area of Northeast Ohio the minimum connect fee is $30 a month which is mostly deregulation taxes, State community security tax which gives free or reduced bills to disabled sick and elderly.. We also pay a privilege fee because we have solar and transmission line maintenance fee even though the power company will not repair our service drop or meter can for free or a reduced cost if they get damaged that insurance costs extra.. So we try our best to use that minimum power so we are not paying for nothing in the Summer.. Now you can get a factory made in a steel stackable box a 15kw 48v/52.2v battery for around $2,500 delivered to your door.. A bit over 5 years ago I paid over$3,500 for an 8 cel L-16 lead battery that had a useable capacity of barely 5kw.. This past Summer I built a 30kw LiFePo4 battery bank for a bit over $4k which has 5x the energy storage and I am very pleased with it from what I saw in a short time.. This Spring to Fall will be great because in the past during the longer days we had more power than we could use and it was wasted during the day and we would run out of battery at night.. Now I will even be able to heat hot water at night and run the washer and dryer..
I meet 3 of the 4 criteria. I battery makes a lot of sense for my situation.
Most certainly. Having a battery is a great option for many folks and you look like one of them. Thanks for watching.
@@MySolarHomeUSA 👍 my pleasure!
Allround battery is very very important!
Thanks for watching.
Please don't add captions when TH-cam does it for you, otherwise I can't turn it off.
Thank you for your feedback. I have had a lot of folks asking for captions as well. So I am a little conflicted.
just built an 8kwh battery for 350 usd lol. people who dont take the time to learn this stuff (which is all on youtube to free) get to pay the electricity tax. straight up lifepo4 cells are so cheap right now its insane, and all these companies are making a killing off people while people love to talk about their tax credits theyre getting
I bought 120kWh for 10K
What cells are you buying?
I agree. But, DIY skills are pretty rare. You are among a sliver of people who have the interest and the skillset to design and build your own energy storage systems. Remember, it only looks and feels easy for the folks who actually do it, like you. For the rest, it is very difficult and they have to go the route of getting it installed. Thanks for sharing.
I built a 30+ KW LiFePo4 battery bank for just over $4k out of EVE 300a cells which replaced an 8 cell L-16 lead acid battery bank.. All I can say is wow, 5x the storage and I can charge them at a higher rate which makes better use of the 7kwh x 7 hours my panels can produce in the Summer.. Set them up late Summer 2024 so I did not get their full punch but 2025 should be amazing and I look forward to those State minimum bills of $30.. They snuck through a law in Ohio that bans net meter, forces digital meters and a fee if you have solar as part of a deregulation of grid power.. The reason we have the big battery is because as rural grid customers we often suffer from brief to long brown outs or outages and having that battery online all the time means I don't have to run out and turn on the generator several times in a week for short bad grid events.. The large number of 5kw 12v batteries that have hit the market in the past 6 months is astounding.. Some series or parallel well and some do not depending on their built in BMS.. Have seen several people who have opened the plastic boxes done a series parallel scheme and replaced the cheap BMS with a better one that does 48v and built a monster battery with the bargain cells..
@@MySolarHomeUSA That is where the stackable 5kw or 15kw prebuilt boxes fill the gap, 48v 5kw boxes for under $1k and 15kw boxes for under $2.5k shipped to your door.. Then it is just a matter of running cables and connecting boxes.. If you can't do that then you pay an electrician or the solar installer to do it.. The cheapest route these days is the 5kw 12v batteries for about $200 each then wiring a bunch together to make any size battery you want.. I built my 30+kw 55v battery bank out of high grade EVE cells and JK BMS controllers because yes I built industrial control panels and installed my own solar setup..
Great information ! Thank You
I’m glad you found it helpful! Happy New Year.
Off grid is the way to go. I only paid 4grand for 40kwh bank.
Super. Glad it worked out for you.
Cheaper to buy a whole house ic generator.
Yes, cheaper for sure. But, just a little noisy, a lot of maintenance and polluting.
There's a sucker born every minute.
There is a lot of misinformation LOL.
Yeah a tesla battery is completely not worth it. Could buy 50kw of storage for one tesla battery
DIY is the way to go. Unfortunately not everyone has the chops to take that route. Thanks for watching.
they like to make money from solar good you can but the utolity is not your battery
that is a left cheap idea for those who can buy and install solar
but yes nice talking for selling solar panels but not the truth, if a other person
have to run a generator is he allowed the power he is not using to feed in to utility?
Thanks for watching.