The California Power Mess

[ericm979]

The house I'm getting built in Oregon will have 12kw of solar and 28kwh of battery. It'll be all electric with mini splits for HVAC. And of course a wood stove. Since its a new house I had to make some guesses as to the power use using HVAC loading data and some estimates. It's surely not enough for the entire farm (there are additional meters for a large shop and irrigation pump) but we can put up more panels later to cover that.

It'd be great if the powers that be would make the utility companies do the right thing, but they don't. We're coming from a mountain area of California which has had outages since we moved in 27 years ago. There are more each year as the infrastructure deteriorates. I see Oregon power companies now following in their footsteps.

I'm fortunate that I can afford to put in solar and batteries or a generator to make up for the power company not holding up their end of the public utility bargain (monopoly with guaranteed profits in return for reliable affordable power). But a lot of folks can't.

 

[EbS-P]

The house I'm getting built in Oregon will have 12kw of solar and 28kwh of battery. It'll be all electric with mini splits for HVAC. And of course a wood stove. Since its a new house I had to make some guesses as to the power use using HVAC loading data and some estimates. It's surely not enough for the entire farm (there are additional meters for a large shop and irrigation pump) but we can put up more panels later to cover that.

It'd be great if the powers that be would make the utility companies do the right thing, but they don't. We're coming from a mountain area of California which has had outages since we moved in 27 years ago. There are more each year as the infrastructure deteriorates. I see Oregon power companies now following in their footsteps.

I'm fortunate that I can afford to put in solar and batteries or a generator to make up for the power company not holding up their end of the public utility bargain (monopoly with guaranteed profits in return for reliable affordable power). But a lot of folks can't.

HVAC loads are so variable. You can get an estimates by looking at heating/cooling degree days and your system size and design temp. My experience is that adding an EV in the single highest usage and we drive 8-9k miles and live in the south with note great insulation. When the grid goes down 28 kWh would last us a single day rainy business as usual no car charging,

interesting observation you probably won’t have 28kwh stored when the grid goes down. So make a mental note of what to turn off and what not to use.

We had our discharge limit set to 20%. Utility had an equipment failure. Looked awful dark out when I woke up. Neighbor is on a different grid. He didn’t have power. Phone didn’t push my notifications while I’m sleeping. We wake up to 15% of 13 kWh left. I went around unplugging everything. Told the kids they couldn’t watch tv that morning shut off the router and modem. I knew I had to make it to about 9:30 in the morning. We did. Got down to 8%. Almost a 6 hour outage. No grid power really changes when you and what you turn on if your battery charge rate is significantly less than you output. I didn’t want to spend for a second powerwall. Your system seems more equally sized.

Congrats on the new system.