These extreme hot days has been pretty interesting. It was cloudy yesterday as well so with heavy A/C demand, seems like a bad situation if one were to lose power and the grid is down if one wanted A/C on (not a surprise and we all knew how far batteries will really last (like not long at all)). Does anyone know how long a decently sized home generator can run for and is anyone thinking of solutions/ways of dealing with extreme heat, off grid, longer term grid outage?
I remember reading about datacenters using special A/Cs that freeze ice during the day and have air blown over ice for cooling when the sun doesn't shine anymore. There are whole house fans, but those are less useful when it's still 80 out at night. Are variable, multi stage A/Cs a lot more energy efficient? I notice my single stage AC pulls like 3.5-4kW normally and I don't have enough roof space to really put more panels at this point.
I'm not on VPP (being on Enphase batteries) and I can't even get through peak currently with the high heat and still have a decently reserve. I'd probably hit my reserve in an hour if I were on it.
I was micromanaging my reserve yesterday and was pulling from the grid all day (set reserve at 100%) so I can be at full (from the mixed sun) before 4pm. My consumption hit an all time high (for me) of 75kWh+ yesterday when we are 15-20kWh in the winter (maybe ~35kWh normally in summer pre-solar).
Just curious if more folks are thinking of other things in the toolbox like hybrid water heaters or have other things they can share/thinking about. I assume this type of weather will be the norm for a long while.