Curious, any Canadian folks have experience with getting larger home batteries installed? It seems like per the electrical code, going beyond 80 kWh can be tricky (not much if you have 2 EVs), so interested if folks have navigated this
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@christianselig Don’t forget to check how much power you will be able to draw from batteries. It is possible that you won’t be able to pull enough energy at once to cover your home AND EVs for charging.
This will remove the requirement to have enough capacity to cover EVs and will make a smaller battery work for you.
I have recently installed home batteries and they are 30kWh. However, my inverter can only provide 10kW from them with 3.3kW per phase. Enough for AC and home but not EV charging.
@christianselig 80 kWh is already an insane amount of energy! How do you plan on using it?
@layoutSubviews In 2026 it’s really not though, I have two EVs totaling 215 kWh parked in my garage right now. I’d love to be able to charge up more than 1/3 of the way in a power outage. Even without EVs with how glacial our government I’d love to handle more of our energy demands through stored solar instead of the majority fossil fuel grid
@christianselig @layoutSubviews The idea in Europe is that you would have two mobile batteries totalling 215 kWh, that can power your home via bi-directional chargers. How much of those kWh do you really need for everyday driving? It seems like a way better deal to me, especially because it seems very unlikely that you could even fill both cars with solar energy in Canada.
@christianselig @layoutSubviews We only have 1 EV, but our daily electricty usage is 30kWh, 80 of storage would get us through an average 2 days, is no sun really that likely? Maybe it is where you are, and maybe expecting the grid back in 3 days is also unlikely.
But I do think that is getting into fringe territory.
@LovesTha @layoutSubviews Yeah ours is under 20 kWh daily, but in the winter seasons a few days or even a week of severely overcast weather isn't uncommon, kinda want to plan for the worst not the average, you know?
@christianselig @layoutSubviews Also my disaster planning assumes I'll charge the EV somewhere else, not at home. Is that a reasonable idea?
@LovesTha @layoutSubviews We don't have a lot of EV chargers around here, so having every EV in the area line up for hours to get power doesn't sound fun. Combine that with them not being the most reliable? Potentially a disaster, so definitely not something I would depend on personally
@christianselig Backup power makes sense...
But filling them with solar seems far-fetched, here Down Under I max out at ~45kWh per day around the Summer solstice with a 5kW system. You must have an oversized system to be able to generate that much energy in a day in Canada!
@layoutSubviews Yeah we're looking at closer to a 20-25 kW system given that solar panels are at like $0.50 per kW right now haha, and it will all be south-facing (north facing equivalent Down Under)
@christianselig Does your distributor allow you to install such an oversized system? In most of the world there are regulations that cap the size of the system (usually depends on whether your dwelling is on single-phase or 3-phase) so as not to overwhelm the local electrical infrastructure
@layoutSubviews The limit here for grid-tied is 27 kW yeah, with the potential to go beyond that if you don't tie it into the grid obviously
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