Power out - now I know why we got Powerwalls!

[ucmndd]

I've lived in my house for 7 years and not one power outage. It's basically going to boil down to if I want to put my saving for a Model S or CyberTruck behind by 15k or not.

If it’s truly an either-or sort of calculus, I would probably hold off for a year or so to see how the PowerShare capability in the Cybertruck evolves, matures, and spreads throughout the product line.

 

[BGbreeder]

With respect to the internet, that is a concern. We were out for about 5 hours yesterday and the internet stayed up the entire time. We have Comcast (or whatever they are these days) cable service and they seem to have good backup power supplies. Previously, we had a 2-day power outage when some guy took out a telephone pole with his car. During that outage after the first day, we lost the cable connection to the house. But Comcast has wifi at their boxes in the neighborhood and that was up. So, we could connect, but at 4-10 mbps max.

In an outage, our previous ISP stayed on between two minutes and two hours, despite a regulatory requirement for much longer. The lack of backup at the ISP was a major reason of why we replaced them with an ISP that had backup, plus it had improved speeds as a bonus.

 

[TheLastDon]

If it’s truly an either-or sort of calculus, I would probably hold off for a year or so to see how the PowerShare capability in the Cybertruck evolves, matures, and spreads throughout the product line.

Oh yeah, definitely. I JUST bought a Model Y. I won't be getting the CT or S for another 4 or 5 years while I save.

 

[hmcgregoraz]

The powerwalls dont tend to pay for themselves by themselves unless you have a situation like @jboy210 has, where you can factor in lost business because you work from home, etc.

Where they benefit is from peace of mind in the face of an outage, and ease of use. Generators are generally cheaper, but unless you get a whole home can be a bit of a pain to get going, maintain etc. Still, a generator is cheaper.

I have said this on a few threads where this question generally comes up though, and after going through a couple of power outages at my current home , along with the yearly threat of power safety power shut offs (PSPS), having powerwalls gives me an incredible mental "connection" to my home that we didnt have before.

We lost a bunch of food a couple different times, as I didnt have a generator, and wasnt really wanting to buy one because "we hardly ever have power outages".

I feel incredibly safe and secure in my home now. We have had a couple power safety shut offs since we got our powerwalls in 2020, as well as a couple of unplanned outages of a few hours, and we basically carried on with very little change. On the outages of no known length (that ended up being a few hours but we didnt know it), we did go into "curtailment" mode, reducing our energy usage by unplugging and turning off things we didnt need to use.

We watched a TV on a much lower power using TV, watched shows saved on my NAS instead of trying to use internet, unplugged some stuff (we have a sheet saved of things to unplug in a power outage in a room by room basis to cut power usage). We can cut homes energy run rate from approximately 1.6-1.8kWh to about 900 Wh, increasing our powerwall run time without impacting our lives much at all, and we can get it down to around 400wh by impacting ourselves a bit more but still being comfortable.

Anyway, its not a "pencil out financial" thing for me, its a comfort thing, and I love my powerwalls even though I am on NEM 1 so they wont ever really pay me back, per se.


EDIT.. @bmah and I were posting at the same time, and said the same basic thing (except I used way more words lmao).

@jboy210 , what do you do for internet if your power outage lasts longer than your ISP has for battery backup at whatever their station is? For us, thats about a 2 hour outage. We use our phones for hotspots, and limit internet usage, but I am a hybrid worker who works from home and office, not a full time home worker.

We have 3x Powerwall 2, and 23.5KW of Solar (well, 20KW AC), a Model X 90D, a Model 3 LR, and a Model Y LR.

The Powerwalls in Tucson AZ do not pencil out based on saved electrical costs, as our power costs, and net metering arrangements are not horrible.

But if you look at Solar + whole house generator with transfer switch vs Solar + Powerwalls, and especially if you include the tax credit, yes it can make $ sense even without the comfort side of the equation.

-Harry

 

[ucmndd]

With respect to the internet, that is a concern. We were out for about 5 hours yesterday and the internet stayed up the entire time.

We are well out of the service area of the big boys. I currently have two options:

The local cable company offers 1gb speed but is generally less reliable and their neighborhood repeaters or vaults or whatever they’re called have no power backup so when the power is out they’re down immediately.

The local phone company offers ~25mb DSL that’s rock solid, designed the way I design networks, and I’m convinced would keep humming along for weeks or months after nuclear winter hits. But it’s 25mb, so you can imagine which I chose. Cable company plus generous tethering allowances on the cell plan. Eero’s internet backup feature works quite well - keeps everything and everyone happy for the most part.

Thankfully the phone company just finished infrastructure work for a FTTP network in our neighborhood, so hoping I’ll have the best of both worlds before too long.

We did try Starlink for a while - it certainly passed the “works when the power is out” test but wasn’t really ideal for the other 364 days of the year.