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StankyDudeHoleDandy t1_ixaze3n wrote

Reply to comment by Darondo in Apologies for yet another thread on the new electricity rates coming our way, but for anyone who has yet to switch away from Eversource, I just did it and it took all of two minutes and will save my wife and I tons of money by mikemikemikeandike

And thats why whole home battery backups are worth their weight in gold. Store and then use, even when the grid goes down. I wish there was more education around about the importance of powerwalls and the like combined with solar.

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Darondo t1_ixazm4m wrote

I could not convince myself that a battery made any economic sense for me. It would never pay for itself. The seasonal rate differences are negligible compared to the upfront battery cost. Am I missing something?

Granted, I live in an area with a very stable grid. I’ll probably end up with an EV that can serve as a house backup at some point anyways. The F-150 can already do that I bet other manufacturers will adopt that in the next few years.

Edit: In states with shitty net metering, batteries are essential imo. But CT is still really close to 1:1 net metering.

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StankyDudeHoleDandy t1_ixb0pdq wrote

Yea for so it doesn't make sence but for others it extremely useful. Such as using your solar durring an outage, choosing to toggle between when you charge your battery and when you use the grid durring off-peak hours. Its the closest thing to "off-grid" that you can get. They keep saying that the F150 can but have yet to prove they have the tech to do so, I am extremely hopeful for this though.

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RoboticGreg t1_ixcutxi wrote

As electric vehicles penetrate deeper, I predict electricity will get more and more expensive from 3pm to 10pm to account for everyone plugging their cars in when they get home from work. I think batteries might not make economic sense now, but peak shaving is going to be a more and more important thing to take into consideration. The cannabis legalization in CT will also impact this (It's crazy, marijuana legalization is changing how some major suppliers design power grid equipment and transformers)

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Darondo t1_ixcvkg2 wrote

That’s fascinating. I hadn’t considered the energy impacts from a changing agriculture industry.

Eversource already has a $200 yearly incentive to encourage charging your EV in off-peak hours. “Off-peak” really only excludes some daytime hours during the hottest days of the year at the moment, but like you said, I’m sure it will become increasingly restrictive.

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lizzy-tish t1_ixcsxvr wrote

Can you tell me more about a while home battery backup? Is it a solar powered storage and who would install it, where would I purchase? Thanks!

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StankyDudeHoleDandy t1_ixcx959 wrote

Yes the battery is charged by solar, however it can also be fed by the grind if you wanted to for some random reason. The DC power runs to the inverter from your panels than once converted to AC power it charges the battery. You can monitor the power draw of your house and the amount of solar energy collected through an App on your phone or computer. Companies like Tesla have solar and batterie packages for sale on their website, but I know the solar company SunRun also sells and installs Teslas Power Walls with their own solar arrays.

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