High Tide Aquatics

Are you guys prepared for this? How many of you have generators?

ofzakaria said:
How do you like the Tesla powerwall? How much did it cost you?
I have good solar systems at my home but hesitated from adding the battery cause I heard it's still not 100% safe especially the Tesla ones...
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I paid full price, $13715 including installation, for 2 Powerwall2’s. But at the time PGE had a generous rebate (SGIP) which eventually paid for a large portion.

I’m not aware of any particular safety issues, though I’m sure I could find lots of opinions online if I cared to. Nothing is 100% safe, your phone battery could melt down in your pocket. From my perspective I trust Tesla engineering more than other battery makers. They are in my garage next to my much larger Tesla battery in my car. Certainly I feel like it is safer than having a similar amount of energy stored in flammable fuel for a generator. And safer than not having backup power.
 
JVU said:
I paid full price, $13715 including installation, for 2 Powerwall2’s. But at the time PGE had a generous rebate (SGIP) which eventually paid for a large portion.

I’m not aware of any particular safety issues, though I’m sure I could find lots of opinions online if I cared to. Nothing is 100% safe, your phone battery could melt down in your pocket. From my perspective I trust Tesla engineering more than other battery makers. They are in my garage next to my much larger Tesla battery in my car. Certainly I feel like it is safer than having a similar amount of energy stored in flammable fuel for a generator. And safer than not having backup power.
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That's not bad at all. Where did you get it from? Would you recommend the same place?
 
I bought them from Tesla/Solar City, which I think is the only option. They did a great job. Since I was the one of the first residential installs there were some bugs to work out, but they took care of me.
 
JVU said:
I bought them from Tesla/Solar City, which I think is the only option. They did a great job. Since I was the one of the first residential installs there were some bugs to work out, but they took care of me.
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I got my solar system for like $35k am generating more than am consuming now and pushing the rest to the grid. Now pge no longer buy energy back from you so I rather store it. But last year when I got my solar, Tesla quoted 40k worth of batteries only to support my house consumption..

Tesla is not the only option, there are couple. other options Korean and Japanese batteries they can also go outdoor which for me bit safer than indoor.
These batteries if caught on fire there is nothing putting them down...
I am opposit, I trust nothing out of Tesla. But that's a story for another day ha ha.

Thanks for the information
 
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They are definitely rated for outdoor. They offered to put mine outside, but inside just worked better for me.

I don’t think outside is safer than inside a garage though. They both would be on a wall of your house and directly hooked up to your electrical system of your house. They might be a bit better protected from being damaged inside, and severe penetrating damage would be the main danger (of shorting causing a fire).

I didn’t mean they were the only battery maker, I meant the only way to get Tesla batteries like I have is through Tesla (as far as I know).
 
To be completely off-grid you would have to have substantially more solar panels and larger battery capacity, rough estimate maybe twice as large for both. The main issue would be that solar energy is greatly reduced throughout the winter and during cloudy weather, so you would need to be capturing more of the weak solar during those times, and also trying to store more to ride out those times.

I optimized my system to try to nearly zero out my bill and be able to ride out short term outages. So I produce a little more than I need during most days of Fall and Spring, and significantly less than I need in Winter (less sun) and Summer (air conditioning). Throughout the year I make about 70-80% of the electricity I use. With time of use metering, I get a lot more credit for electricity back to the grid from my panels during daylight hours when solar is producing, vs the inexpensive night hours I’m paying for. Add on the batteries that are optimized for time of use as well, and it approximately zeroes-out my bill (besides mandatory fees).

If there is an outage, the battery capacity I have isn’t enough to last me more than half a day or less, but the hope is that it is enough to last me until the sun comes up and the panels start producing, while turning off everything non-essential in the house.

It’s a compromise. If you wanted to be off-grid you’d have to go much bigger otherwise it would be a constant issue.
 
Need to find a junked Tesla and rip the powerpack out of that, now there's some storage capacity! Of course you'd also need an inverter, and chances are any junked Tesla would have things like the batteries "recycled"
 
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