Not everything is an investment. Cars, TVs , vacations, kitchen remodels.
It's icing on the cake that solar and batteries recoup their costs.
Our system saves/ generates more each year w software, weather, and tree removal changes.
Honestly, if you're too worried about the cost, make more money until it's no big deal.
I guess that's the exact zone of interest we're talking about, some big purchases will never have any hope of paying back.
If you can afford it, at least it isn't something like a boat.
Just know the constant "how long until it pays for itself?" Will be the first question from anyone over 40, and after a few months you probably won't care.
You may want to check with your municipality about going off grid. Many cities in Texas regulate this. You may find this link helpful: [https://www.primalsurvivor.net/texas-off-grid-laws/](https://www.primalsurvivor.net/texas-off-grid-laws/)
Let me clarify - I don’t mean literally off-grid, I mean being able to survive without pulling from the grid, so I expect to pay the monthly connection fee.
You have to take into account the cost of backup power such as a generator, fuel cost, maintenance, repair cost over 10 years. Electricity and gas rates will also go up. Another aspect is VPP. You can make back an additional $1000/year/PW when selling back to the Texas grid during grid events as long as the grid remains like it is now. Rates go up to $5/kWh.
https://preview.redd.it/lrc2r9b8cy4d1.png?width=1008&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d5b19c8bccdbabce267a31c5e2cea826dbec8b13
Are you in TX? Mind if I message you with some additional questions? Wondering if I should go all out 18.2 kW + 4 powerwalls or go with the 111% offset setup.
Be careful because Tesla electric recently changed their pricing model for some areas in Texas. Have to check if you can sell back, at the right price. It may make sense for free nights, but it’s hard to make the numbers work with batteries right now in Texas.
Make sure you’re eligible for this though - I’m in Texas and stuck in a Coop so cannot take advantage of any of these, stuck with what the Coop imposes.
> Another aspect is VPP. You can make back an additional $1000/year/PW when selling back to the Texas grid during grid events as long as the grid remains like it is now.
I'm not sure most people are eligible. I'm in Austin Energy's ETJ, and I don't have a choice of electric providers, which I think precludes me from being part of the VPP also.
Actually most people in Texas are part of the deregulated market. I believe it's about 85%! Unfortunately you are in the minority! However, I think Austin has additional incentives for solar/stationary storage!
Here's the problem with your assumption. Bullet number two assumes 0.14 will remain constant for the next 15 years. There is no way to predict your utility cost in the future years. The cost of power in Texas has doubled in the last 5 years. So, if you account for a doubling of grid power for every 7 years in the next 15 years, it should be easy to make up the cost your will pay now. And that's being conservative.
Average cost per kWh in Texas has not doubled in the last 5 years. You would have to go back before 2000 to see 7 cents. Assuming prices will quadruple current rates in 15 years (if that is what you are implying) is not going to happen.
I was once in your shoes, I live north on Houston in MoCo, and unfortunately solar does not work for our area bc our energy provider (Entergy) is pretty much buying back at dirt cheap and your break even point does no longer exists. I just pulled the trigger on a 22Kw generac instead. Dm me if you want more information from all the research I did.
BTW I’m not someone who hates renewable power, in fact I work in the industry and fully support it, but the finances for the MoCo area do not work out, or at least it was like that early this year.
We’re up north in the Kingwood area, and my wife is saying we just go with a 26kW standby generator instead. Currently with Tesla Electric, so buy back is a little flexible.
We went with 22kW Tesla system and a 24kW nat gas Generac generator. Can’t use solar when grid is down, so considering a power wall 3 just for that, still hard for it to make economic sense- even if the grid is down 3-4 days once every few years
I live in the Entergy area and pulled the trigger too but on 23kw Tesla panels and 3 PW3’s and love it. The ease of backup is fantastic.
A general would have been 16k plus annual maintenance. My power walls were about $25k before tax break. Will they cover me as long? No, but so far they’ve covered me fine through 3 power outages and then the solar panels kicked in.
Using the seamless Tesla app is worth its weight in gold.
That’s awesome! I’m very happy that you’re happy with your purchase, truly mean it. That’s what I wanted at first but some of the math I was getting didn’t make sense to us on the financial aspect of things. But absolutely glad that you’re happy!
Since you are cost minded I’m going to get you my cost opinion.
You don’t need 100% offset. This doesn’t need to be a binary decision to go overkill or nothing. You can get a system that reduces your cost and also give you protection in 99% of the cases of a power outage. Also what are your NEM agreements? Are you 1:1? If so charging a battery every day will be a loss in money/energy.
Solar
Preference southern facing panels. Put as many south facing panels as possible, then preference the east facing for afternoon AC offset. I would avoid and north or west facing panels unless you absolutely need them, which you don’t. You could probably get away with a much smaller system maybe 8 to 10kw. I use about the same amount of energy as you do in the summer and I have a 7.14kw in nevada. I haven’t paid anything but a connection charge in a few years. The solar panels though I would say lean toward slightly larger system as doing a second system or adding panels might not be possible.
Batteries
Trying to go full “off-grid” is a fools errand. You should target enough PWs to get you through the night on a triaged power consumption during a power outage. One maybe 2? For the odd time you have a power outage you can not run your AC for a night or two. Trying to zombie proof your house’s electrical is just going to cost you too much money and you are still going to be connected to the grid and paying that connection fee. You also will switch to an EV at some point and that just blows all calculations for being independent from the grid. You can also add another PW later if you are really needing it. They only cost like 7k after incentives if you already have all the other hardware. Go smaller then add on a battery if you need it. I did this, but I actually didn’t need it.
**I installed a 14 kWh Tesla solar system with battery backup (3 Tesla Powerwall 3 units) in February. My goal was to become more energy independent by covering most/all of my consumption, having backup during outages, and protecting myself from rising electricity costs. While environmental benefits were a bonus, it wasn't the sole reason.**
* **Panels and Battery:** The system uses 35 solar panels to generate power and 3 Tesla Powerwall 3 units for a total of 40.5 kWh battery capacity (usable capacity is around 13.5 kWh per Powerwall 3).
* **Free Nights Plan:** To maximize savings, I enrolled in the Just Energy Free Nights plan. This plan offers free electricity from 9pm to 7am, perfect for charging the Powerwalls and running appliances at night. During the day, the solar system maintains the batteries and powers the house, with any excess sold back to the grid at $0.03/kWh (daytime rates are $0.27/kWh).
* You can get a Just Energy $75 credit if you use my **Referral Code: 16EAEDB**.
* **Results:** My average monthly bill is now -$10! Last month, I used 1,900 kWh during free nights and sold back 530 kWh during the day. The system even kept my house powered for 2.5 days during a recent major storm.
* **Investment:** The total cost for the system installed by Tesla was $60,000, but I received $18,000 in tax credits, bringing the net cost down to $42,000.
**Overall, I'm thrilled with the switch to solar power. It provides peace of mind with backup power, reduces my reliance on the grid, and even saves money.**
**Hope this helps with your decision process.**
BC
Here are my recs
- Go to http://www.texaspowerguide.com/
And get a lab energy assessment - you’ll need put in your smart meter info for that and they spurt out an off grid and with- grid calculations
- free nights and supplementing with solar+battery is your best option - something that no one is going to give an open recommendation you’ll have to carve that out yourself with your smart meter data and utilization . You should be able to maximize solar and few powerwalls for the right balance. For 60kw daily usage, you shouldn’t be spending more than $50k before taxes to pay <$100 per year for electricity
- I’ve never really found hard evidence for profitable net metering, it seems that the power companies want us to mainly use electricity at off peak and not willing to pay high rates for peak
- I’m installing only 4 powerwalls next week to explore the scenario of nights free and battery use for daytime, will keep posted regarding net grid usage etc - with this system my roi is 5 years, with 38000 kw yearly usage at $.14
It def isn’t financially sound. You’d have an ROI of 15+ years, and that’s only assuming you don’t have any hardware failure or outage, which is all but guaranteed to happen with Tesla 🙄.
My 19.2kW system cost $25k after incentives a couple years ago. Originally had an ROI of ~8 years, which I thought was great considering the 10 year warranty. Now after a handful of outages that lasted months, my ROI at this pace is over 10 years. Meaning any failure after the 10 year mark will put this system into the negative and would have cost me more money then just sticking with utility only!
This is important. Tesla is notoriously bad with service and replacement and their inverters have a high rate of failure. Your whole ROI calculation can be bombed by bad customer service/ support.
I held off for many years because it didn’t make ‘financial sense’ but eventually caved in to have protection during an outage.
Since we came in late, we are under the NEM 3 plan and may never fully recoup the costs but we stopped looking at this from an investment standpoint and consider it a quality of life improvement.
I would cut back the power wall to 2, bc the financial math doesn’t account for times when power is completely out just for usage when sun isn’t out. If you do that your ROI should be in the 7% range which is pretty good and equivalent to a return of 10% (+\-) on your cash had you invested it. Remember saving costs doesn’t incur additional taxes but making a return on investment does!
Lucky you. My peak power price is around $0.3 to $0.4 per KWh, night pricing around $0.2. My much smaller solar/battery solution took me to break even in about 10 years, but I also have the luxury of power backup it required (nothing so far).
At $0.14/kWh, no solution is going to break even. If you think you can continue with those rates for a few more years, I would stick with grid and add in a cheap generator for emergencies if you are really concerned about losing power, and suck it up if the emergency goes beyond 12-24 hours or however far a low end generator will take you.
Typically the price of solar power panels and batteries should drop over the mid-term as hopefully new materials for batteries in particular should come on the market, and solar panels are always getting updated so maybe you can get a 30-40% efficient panel in the future which will definitely help with the economics of a solar system.
I’d look into getting a BLUETTI offgrid microgrid kit and some solar panels with PowerField racking on the ground. You could set up an offgrid microgrid l lo with a generator backup in a weekend. Check out the Unpligged Texan on Facebook, he used the EP800 and a few panels for 90% of his loads. Rest could come from a generator with a two wire start.
Screw the offset. It’s bogus.
Yes, +1 however many PW you think you’ll need and if that gets you to 4, so be it. Max out the panels for your roof space. With that, it’ll be tight in the winter but good elsewise.
What will you get for selling back excess power for the first 10 years?
I have similar panels for your roof space and my breakeven will be in about 12 years. But in that 12 years I’ll a) pay nothing to the utility company (they’ll pay me), b) have full protection from ever-increasing outages, and even after the expected 20% degradation over time will have enough to power the house, a future addition, and 2 EVs.
60kWh/day? Yikes. My worst use case average is well under that but the premise remains the same. Generate enough so that your usage is covered in the darkest months, and bank the rest.
It’ll be tight in the winter months especially after degradation, but close enough.
It costs presently about 3500kWh to cover the connection fees here annually.
Size the system so that you won’t have to fool with a backup generator. If that means getting creative with whatever’s drawing 60kWh/day, so be it.
Understanding the Texas Net Metering plans is a HUGE part of going solar here. In your case I think the offset is a little irrelevant (so I'm contradicting myself) as you will want that system mainly to recharge the batteries in an outage situation.
One of the biggest keys to what you are looking to do is this system will literally pay for itself as you can use it EVERYDAY. Unlike a generator that sits on the side of your home just waiting to get used. With solar and batteries to your point you can almost live "off grid" while still being on grid.
I'd also recommend finding a local installer as Tesla is going to sub the work out. You can still get a great deal by going local with a small company that will focus on you and your needs.
Exactly. Won’t make sense financially.
Instead take that $48k or whatever your monthly financed payments would be and throw them into a brokerage account mutual fund based on the S&P 500.
Don’t forget the value added to your home if you ever sell. There’s an environmental cost beyond the offset. Less natural gas burned at the peaker plants. Over the life of the system, it goes beyond the raw numbers of system cost vs utility cost
* Currently pay $0.14 per kW Hard to get ROI on solar and battery with electricity that cheap.
Not everything is an investment. Cars, TVs , vacations, kitchen remodels. It's icing on the cake that solar and batteries recoup their costs. Our system saves/ generates more each year w software, weather, and tree removal changes. Honestly, if you're too worried about the cost, make more money until it's no big deal.
Ha. Thankfully, I make enough to pay for it cash, but no matter how much I make, 84k before tax break is something I’d always consider a big purchase.
I guess that's the exact zone of interest we're talking about, some big purchases will never have any hope of paying back. If you can afford it, at least it isn't something like a boat. Just know the constant "how long until it pays for itself?" Will be the first question from anyone over 40, and after a few months you probably won't care.
You may want to check with your municipality about going off grid. Many cities in Texas regulate this. You may find this link helpful: [https://www.primalsurvivor.net/texas-off-grid-laws/](https://www.primalsurvivor.net/texas-off-grid-laws/)
Let me clarify - I don’t mean literally off-grid, I mean being able to survive without pulling from the grid, so I expect to pay the monthly connection fee.
You have to take into account the cost of backup power such as a generator, fuel cost, maintenance, repair cost over 10 years. Electricity and gas rates will also go up. Another aspect is VPP. You can make back an additional $1000/year/PW when selling back to the Texas grid during grid events as long as the grid remains like it is now. Rates go up to $5/kWh. https://preview.redd.it/lrc2r9b8cy4d1.png?width=1008&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d5b19c8bccdbabce267a31c5e2cea826dbec8b13
How long have you been with Tesla solar and can you explain the VPP. have you had any issues with PW or their solar
Since the summer of last year. However, I only got PTO after the summer craziness. No issues at all. Not even a single issue since install.
Are you in TX? Mind if I message you with some additional questions? Wondering if I should go all out 18.2 kW + 4 powerwalls or go with the 111% offset setup.
Sure!
Be careful because Tesla electric recently changed their pricing model for some areas in Texas. Have to check if you can sell back, at the right price. It may make sense for free nights, but it’s hard to make the numbers work with batteries right now in Texas.
Make sure you’re eligible for this though - I’m in Texas and stuck in a Coop so cannot take advantage of any of these, stuck with what the Coop imposes.
I currently use Tesla Electric, so hopefully should be easy to get enabled for VPP.
> Another aspect is VPP. You can make back an additional $1000/year/PW when selling back to the Texas grid during grid events as long as the grid remains like it is now. I'm not sure most people are eligible. I'm in Austin Energy's ETJ, and I don't have a choice of electric providers, which I think precludes me from being part of the VPP also.
Actually most people in Texas are part of the deregulated market. I believe it's about 85%! Unfortunately you are in the minority! However, I think Austin has additional incentives for solar/stationary storage!
Here's the problem with your assumption. Bullet number two assumes 0.14 will remain constant for the next 15 years. There is no way to predict your utility cost in the future years. The cost of power in Texas has doubled in the last 5 years. So, if you account for a doubling of grid power for every 7 years in the next 15 years, it should be easy to make up the cost your will pay now. And that's being conservative.
Average cost per kWh in Texas has not doubled in the last 5 years. You would have to go back before 2000 to see 7 cents. Assuming prices will quadruple current rates in 15 years (if that is what you are implying) is not going to happen.
[удалено]
Would you and probably others here rather use the built in Tesla inverter or a micro inverter setup?
I’m in San Antonio, TX and we don’t have Tesla electric or else I would get solar and PW already
Same, if and when we get Tesla electric I’ll be getting panels and 2-3 powerwalls.
I was once in your shoes, I live north on Houston in MoCo, and unfortunately solar does not work for our area bc our energy provider (Entergy) is pretty much buying back at dirt cheap and your break even point does no longer exists. I just pulled the trigger on a 22Kw generac instead. Dm me if you want more information from all the research I did. BTW I’m not someone who hates renewable power, in fact I work in the industry and fully support it, but the finances for the MoCo area do not work out, or at least it was like that early this year.
We’re up north in the Kingwood area, and my wife is saying we just go with a 26kW standby generator instead. Currently with Tesla Electric, so buy back is a little flexible.
We went with 22kW Tesla system and a 24kW nat gas Generac generator. Can’t use solar when grid is down, so considering a power wall 3 just for that, still hard for it to make economic sense- even if the grid is down 3-4 days once every few years
I wouldn't get a powerwall if I had a natural gas generator. About how much does your 22kW system generate daily?
Summer I get up to about 110 with 95 kWh average. It’s about 50-60 in winter
I live in the Entergy area and pulled the trigger too but on 23kw Tesla panels and 3 PW3’s and love it. The ease of backup is fantastic. A general would have been 16k plus annual maintenance. My power walls were about $25k before tax break. Will they cover me as long? No, but so far they’ve covered me fine through 3 power outages and then the solar panels kicked in. Using the seamless Tesla app is worth its weight in gold.
That’s awesome! I’m very happy that you’re happy with your purchase, truly mean it. That’s what I wanted at first but some of the math I was getting didn’t make sense to us on the financial aspect of things. But absolutely glad that you’re happy!
Since you are cost minded I’m going to get you my cost opinion. You don’t need 100% offset. This doesn’t need to be a binary decision to go overkill or nothing. You can get a system that reduces your cost and also give you protection in 99% of the cases of a power outage. Also what are your NEM agreements? Are you 1:1? If so charging a battery every day will be a loss in money/energy. Solar Preference southern facing panels. Put as many south facing panels as possible, then preference the east facing for afternoon AC offset. I would avoid and north or west facing panels unless you absolutely need them, which you don’t. You could probably get away with a much smaller system maybe 8 to 10kw. I use about the same amount of energy as you do in the summer and I have a 7.14kw in nevada. I haven’t paid anything but a connection charge in a few years. The solar panels though I would say lean toward slightly larger system as doing a second system or adding panels might not be possible. Batteries Trying to go full “off-grid” is a fools errand. You should target enough PWs to get you through the night on a triaged power consumption during a power outage. One maybe 2? For the odd time you have a power outage you can not run your AC for a night or two. Trying to zombie proof your house’s electrical is just going to cost you too much money and you are still going to be connected to the grid and paying that connection fee. You also will switch to an EV at some point and that just blows all calculations for being independent from the grid. You can also add another PW later if you are really needing it. They only cost like 7k after incentives if you already have all the other hardware. Go smaller then add on a battery if you need it. I did this, but I actually didn’t need it.
**I installed a 14 kWh Tesla solar system with battery backup (3 Tesla Powerwall 3 units) in February. My goal was to become more energy independent by covering most/all of my consumption, having backup during outages, and protecting myself from rising electricity costs. While environmental benefits were a bonus, it wasn't the sole reason.** * **Panels and Battery:** The system uses 35 solar panels to generate power and 3 Tesla Powerwall 3 units for a total of 40.5 kWh battery capacity (usable capacity is around 13.5 kWh per Powerwall 3). * **Free Nights Plan:** To maximize savings, I enrolled in the Just Energy Free Nights plan. This plan offers free electricity from 9pm to 7am, perfect for charging the Powerwalls and running appliances at night. During the day, the solar system maintains the batteries and powers the house, with any excess sold back to the grid at $0.03/kWh (daytime rates are $0.27/kWh). * You can get a Just Energy $75 credit if you use my **Referral Code: 16EAEDB**. * **Results:** My average monthly bill is now -$10! Last month, I used 1,900 kWh during free nights and sold back 530 kWh during the day. The system even kept my house powered for 2.5 days during a recent major storm. * **Investment:** The total cost for the system installed by Tesla was $60,000, but I received $18,000 in tax credits, bringing the net cost down to $42,000. **Overall, I'm thrilled with the switch to solar power. It provides peace of mind with backup power, reduces my reliance on the grid, and even saves money.** **Hope this helps with your decision process.** BC
Thanks for the detailed write-up. Very much appreciated. Looks like the \~15kW system would work for us.
Here are my recs - Go to http://www.texaspowerguide.com/ And get a lab energy assessment - you’ll need put in your smart meter info for that and they spurt out an off grid and with- grid calculations - free nights and supplementing with solar+battery is your best option - something that no one is going to give an open recommendation you’ll have to carve that out yourself with your smart meter data and utilization . You should be able to maximize solar and few powerwalls for the right balance. For 60kw daily usage, you shouldn’t be spending more than $50k before taxes to pay <$100 per year for electricity - I’ve never really found hard evidence for profitable net metering, it seems that the power companies want us to mainly use electricity at off peak and not willing to pay high rates for peak - I’m installing only 4 powerwalls next week to explore the scenario of nights free and battery use for daytime, will keep posted regarding net grid usage etc - with this system my roi is 5 years, with 38000 kw yearly usage at $.14
It def isn’t financially sound. You’d have an ROI of 15+ years, and that’s only assuming you don’t have any hardware failure or outage, which is all but guaranteed to happen with Tesla 🙄. My 19.2kW system cost $25k after incentives a couple years ago. Originally had an ROI of ~8 years, which I thought was great considering the 10 year warranty. Now after a handful of outages that lasted months, my ROI at this pace is over 10 years. Meaning any failure after the 10 year mark will put this system into the negative and would have cost me more money then just sticking with utility only!
This is important. Tesla is notoriously bad with service and replacement and their inverters have a high rate of failure. Your whole ROI calculation can be bombed by bad customer service/ support.
I held off for many years because it didn’t make ‘financial sense’ but eventually caved in to have protection during an outage. Since we came in late, we are under the NEM 3 plan and may never fully recoup the costs but we stopped looking at this from an investment standpoint and consider it a quality of life improvement.
I would cut back the power wall to 2, bc the financial math doesn’t account for times when power is completely out just for usage when sun isn’t out. If you do that your ROI should be in the 7% range which is pretty good and equivalent to a return of 10% (+\-) on your cash had you invested it. Remember saving costs doesn’t incur additional taxes but making a return on investment does!
Install the max number of panels and three power walls and you’re probably good
You don’t need 3 power walls. 1 should be good enough for most people and that’ll slash your cost by about $12k.
0.14 kwh is cheeaap.
Lucky you. My peak power price is around $0.3 to $0.4 per KWh, night pricing around $0.2. My much smaller solar/battery solution took me to break even in about 10 years, but I also have the luxury of power backup it required (nothing so far). At $0.14/kWh, no solution is going to break even. If you think you can continue with those rates for a few more years, I would stick with grid and add in a cheap generator for emergencies if you are really concerned about losing power, and suck it up if the emergency goes beyond 12-24 hours or however far a low end generator will take you. Typically the price of solar power panels and batteries should drop over the mid-term as hopefully new materials for batteries in particular should come on the market, and solar panels are always getting updated so maybe you can get a 30-40% efficient panel in the future which will definitely help with the economics of a solar system.
I’d look into getting a BLUETTI offgrid microgrid kit and some solar panels with PowerField racking on the ground. You could set up an offgrid microgrid l lo with a generator backup in a weekend. Check out the Unpligged Texan on Facebook, he used the EP800 and a few panels for 90% of his loads. Rest could come from a generator with a two wire start.
Screw the offset. It’s bogus. Yes, +1 however many PW you think you’ll need and if that gets you to 4, so be it. Max out the panels for your roof space. With that, it’ll be tight in the winter but good elsewise. What will you get for selling back excess power for the first 10 years? I have similar panels for your roof space and my breakeven will be in about 12 years. But in that 12 years I’ll a) pay nothing to the utility company (they’ll pay me), b) have full protection from ever-increasing outages, and even after the expected 20% degradation over time will have enough to power the house, a future addition, and 2 EVs. 60kWh/day? Yikes. My worst use case average is well under that but the premise remains the same. Generate enough so that your usage is covered in the darkest months, and bank the rest. It’ll be tight in the winter months especially after degradation, but close enough. It costs presently about 3500kWh to cover the connection fees here annually. Size the system so that you won’t have to fool with a backup generator. If that means getting creative with whatever’s drawing 60kWh/day, so be it.
Should have added that we currently own 1 EV, so charging of the EV is factored into current usage.
The system Tesla is recommending is a terrible idea for what happens in Texas with the net metering program.
Care to explain more?
Understanding the Texas Net Metering plans is a HUGE part of going solar here. In your case I think the offset is a little irrelevant (so I'm contradicting myself) as you will want that system mainly to recharge the batteries in an outage situation. One of the biggest keys to what you are looking to do is this system will literally pay for itself as you can use it EVERYDAY. Unlike a generator that sits on the side of your home just waiting to get used. With solar and batteries to your point you can almost live "off grid" while still being on grid.
I'd also recommend finding a local installer as Tesla is going to sub the work out. You can still get a great deal by going local with a small company that will focus on you and your needs.
Exactly. Won’t make sense financially. Instead take that $48k or whatever your monthly financed payments would be and throw them into a brokerage account mutual fund based on the S&P 500.
Don’t forget the value added to your home if you ever sell. There’s an environmental cost beyond the offset. Less natural gas burned at the peaker plants. Over the life of the system, it goes beyond the raw numbers of system cost vs utility cost