Is anyone using Powerwalls as their sole source of power backup, in the Northeastern US, in a place where the grid goes out often? Is It workable in the winter if you’re heating with heat pumps (assuming they have soft starts installed)?
My specifics: rural area with outages a few times a month, mostly a few hours at a time. Longest outage ever was four days. 15.9kw solar generating capacity. Panels pole mounted and seasonally adjusted to maximize output, and they shed snow quickly. I’m not in the lake effect snow belt, but it does snow, and we can have multiple successive days with enough cloud cover to seriously reduce solar generation.
Electrical usage hard to estimate because we”re now switching to electric appliances and geothermal heat pumps. Because of that, power demand will normally be high. In the winter I expect we we will normally consume more power than we produce and make up the balance from the grid. During grid outages we just need to cover necessary loads: one 5 ton heat pump to keep the pipes from freezing, well pump, a few lights and a power outlet, and one cooking appliance (microwave or stovetop).
The cost of installing and running a propane-guzzling generator big enough to back up the minimum necessary loads is enough that it could make economic sense to go with a Powerwall-only backup strategy, even if it took 3 or 4 Powerwalls (past that, the math gets tougher, but I might be able to swing it).
Is a Powerwall-only backup realistic in this scenario? Reliable? Other thoughts?
Thanks for any advice!
My specifics: rural area with outages a few times a month, mostly a few hours at a time. Longest outage ever was four days. 15.9kw solar generating capacity. Panels pole mounted and seasonally adjusted to maximize output, and they shed snow quickly. I’m not in the lake effect snow belt, but it does snow, and we can have multiple successive days with enough cloud cover to seriously reduce solar generation.
Electrical usage hard to estimate because we”re now switching to electric appliances and geothermal heat pumps. Because of that, power demand will normally be high. In the winter I expect we we will normally consume more power than we produce and make up the balance from the grid. During grid outages we just need to cover necessary loads: one 5 ton heat pump to keep the pipes from freezing, well pump, a few lights and a power outlet, and one cooking appliance (microwave or stovetop).
The cost of installing and running a propane-guzzling generator big enough to back up the minimum necessary loads is enough that it could make economic sense to go with a Powerwall-only backup strategy, even if it took 3 or 4 Powerwalls (past that, the math gets tougher, but I might be able to swing it).
Is a Powerwall-only backup realistic in this scenario? Reliable? Other thoughts?
Thanks for any advice!