SpiceWare's Blog

So the solar system is not a perfect solution. We still need electricity companies.

 

Of course, the electricity bill will be lower since the solar panels are used.

 

The best use of solar system is to live in the desert. Or hot areas like California.

With a large enough array, and enough batteries* to cover weather like this, you could eliminate the connection to the grid. It's not really cost effective though.

Battery's up to 29% now.

* Tesla's system supports up to 10 Powerwalls.

Personally I'd think that having all 240V circuits grid only would make sense as those are typically power hungry and would quickly drain the batteries.

Battery's at 75%

 

 

 

Additional photos added for the rest of this comment.

 

The battery's breaker is 240v 30 amp, the panel's is 240v 32 amp.

 

I do have one 240v circuit that's still in the main panel - the dryer outlet. I have a gas dryer so don't use it, but have used it in the past to charge the car when the 120v outlet wasn't enough. Not convenient as it's in the house, so have to deal with Houston heat trying to get in.

 

I could see utilizing it during an extended outage to charge the car provided:

• Powerwall was full
• Sun was out without any cloud cover, meaning I could produce more than the house would use

Yep, charge the car before dumping the excess power back into the grid. It's interesting the power controller doesn't have a circuit specifically for PEV charging.

Yeah, converting DC -> AC -> DC to charge the car battery isn't the most efficient, but having to run DC to the garage would complicate the installation.

I hadn't thought of the AC conversion losses, but running high voltage high current DC lines would probably eat into most of the short term savings. And unless you're going to feed it with a dedicated 240V 100A circuit you're probably not going to see much benefit from a charging time perspective.

 

I'm just thinking that there would be value from the power controller perspective to have a dedicated PEV charging circuit so it can best manage it. And it's a Tesla PowerWall - shouldn't it have a place to plug in your Tesla?