sunwarriors
Active Member
(following is opinion post only, others may differ)
One of the worst places one can be in, in regards to buying solar (at least in my opinion) is buying it but not getting enough to fully offset not only your current bill but as much of your expected increase as you can.
Its human nature, but when people get solar, their electricity usage always goes up.. never down. Significant others / children in the house start leaving lights on more, and any request to go back to conserving is met with "but we have solar now, dont we?".
Additionally, if you dont try to offset 100% of your current usage (by offset that means "generate"), you end up in the situation where you have solar, have to conserve still, and also still have significant bills from the utility.
Couple that with the fact that there will be a push for more electrification (perhaps another EV etc) and also the fact that you will not simply be "adding panels" if you decide later you want more solar, and you have a recipe where you should get "as much as you can afford and fit on your roof, up to about 110-120% offset".
I personally would not purchase or accept a system that was only supposed to cover that little of my usage "right now" let alone any future increases.
With that all being said, its important to remember these are construction projects. There may be technical reason why they only suggested 66% (roof lines, etc), but I would push back on that if it were me.
One more reminder that this is just my personal opinion, and I am not trying to put myself forth as an expert or anything.
In addition to this, I'm definitely in the camp of pile on as much panels, ESS as you can all at once. You will very likely use a ton more power if you have solar or add an EV, multiple EVs. I used to normally use ~20kWh during the summer day, but I've been over 60 kWh now with charging the EV and more heavy AC use (because solar right?).
If you have an EV, you also need a lot to completely support charging it from solar alone. If not, you'll have to still pull from the grid or drain your batteries. You might not want to do that if it's about to go dark soon or your rates are very high.
I also think mentally, for folks, after you pay the big nut of solar, you won't miss the extra $$ for adding more since that's been mentally processed already. You do always remember and see your monthly bills being $10-$15 and not $100 some months or $50 some months. Wife will start asking why is our bills so high, I thought "we got solar" already?
With ESS, IOU price raises can be deflected a bit so after the pains of that 1st/final install payment, you now have a lot more control over your future electricity situation.