@alexmack Not super concerned with making ROI as short as possible, just find more energy independence really appealing rather than relying on others for such an important resource
Also with how slow the grid is "greening" over time I'm not super holding my breath that it'll reach true green status anytime soon
@christianselig In the uk we would not charge car batteries off the house battery - charge both house and car at cheap rates over night. Not sure what tariff structure you have.
@grievousangel if you’re purely targeting financial ROI sure, if you want energy independence and less fossil fuel usage it’s very appealing though
@christianselig What vendor are you considering for panels and batteries?
@melonamin JA for panels currently, EG4 for inverter and batteries
@christianselig honestly, maybe consider your cars as mobile batteries, if you can charge them during the day. You might want to look into bi-directional charging for your cars, instead of a huge battery at home. How often do you expect to need to charge both of your cars during a power outage above 30%?
@stairjoke I wish this worked but there’s quite a few flaws with this. A quick one being both vehicles aren’t always at home, but yes I’ve also had to charge up more than 30% during an outage
@christianselig depending on uptime, a generator and a smaller home battery might be worth considering, instead of a huge battery.
@stairjoke I don't want to rely on fossil fuels
@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.
@ivanpavlov Totally, we’d have two inverters for this reason. Plan right now is an EG4 GridBoss going to two FlexBoss units which can do 16 kW each
@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.
@nevarro @layoutSubviews It depends if you’re only using your batteries as a backup source. I’d like to use them also for primary power (cleaner grid, more independence) and cycling NMC batteries like those found in EVs has a lot shorter cycle life than LFP in home storage
Not sure what you mean about solar, we still have the sun in Canada and I can even max out/clip our current solar setup on a particularly sunny day in the winter
@christianselig @layoutSubviews Sure, but to regularly fill and use to the full 80 kWh + 215 kWh of batteries sounds like a huge challenge. Even with a bigger solar array.
@nevarro @layoutSubviews No not really. In summer for instance doing more than 100 kWh a day with a 25 kW array is not particularly difficult. If you’re then consuming 20 kWh or so daily you have an 80 kWh daily surplus to pocket somewhere, you’d fill up EVs plus 80 kWh in less than a week
@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
