caesia23

caesia23 t1_j3dhrnb wrote

Great conversation! One more data point… we’re in Washington county with solar and a powerwall. We made it through 5 days for the Christmas outage on the powerwall because we got ~20 kWh of solar to top it up along the way. Averaged 5 kWh of usage per day during that period to run water a little (well pump, filters, etc.), keep the house at about 55F (oil furnace that uses some electricity, gas fireplace that doesn’t use any), run the fridge, and keep a few lights on.

Couple of learnings… we’ve upgraded appliances and light fixtures and use all LED bulbs, which makes a difference. Your best ROI is reducing your consumption and insulating like crazy. Powerwall app has wonderful data to study your consumption real time. Was key to have a roof rake to clean off the solar panels to get the tiny bit of power from the December sun even on gloomy days. We’ve been wanting to get rid of oil to go electric for heat but that would have tapped out the battery much more quickly, so diversifying your power/heat sources is helpful.

Hope this is helpful! We worked with Green Mountain Solar and unreservedly recommend them. Screw WEC.

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