I'm trying to find a solution for emergency backup for my 3200 sq ft house. If it were just me in the house, I wouldn't bother. I've been through many power outages. However, I have two tenants in two other apartments, so I really want to have some kind of backup. There's a supercharger about a mile away by a hospital, so I'm not worried about not being able to charge my car.
I can get a backup gas generator and update my electrical panel for about 16K. Ideally, I really don't want to be burning anything, and I would prefer battery storage. However, I have a complicated situation with my solar panels (5 years old, 9.86 kWp). When I installed the system, TVA was offering a buy back plan, and batteries weren't really a thing yet, so I went with that. If I want to remain a part of the TVA agreement, then adding more panels to charge batteries would have been prohibitively expensive.
Yet another option would be to leave the TVA program, but I would lose financial benefits. The final option, it seems, would be to simply install a battery (or two) that I would charge from the grid. Does anyone have experience doing this? It's not ideal, because you can't predict the weather, and I wouldn't be able to charge from the solar panels. My solar installer does NOT recommend a PW3 because of a limitation of how the panels feed to it.
Suggestions?
I can get a backup gas generator and update my electrical panel for about 16K. Ideally, I really don't want to be burning anything, and I would prefer battery storage. However, I have a complicated situation with my solar panels (5 years old, 9.86 kWp). When I installed the system, TVA was offering a buy back plan, and batteries weren't really a thing yet, so I went with that. If I want to remain a part of the TVA agreement, then adding more panels to charge batteries would have been prohibitively expensive.
Yet another option would be to leave the TVA program, but I would lose financial benefits. The final option, it seems, would be to simply install a battery (or two) that I would charge from the grid. Does anyone have experience doing this? It's not ideal, because you can't predict the weather, and I wouldn't be able to charge from the solar panels. My solar installer does NOT recommend a PW3 because of a limitation of how the panels feed to it.
Suggestions?