I’ve been thinking about buying a few batteries for my parents (black out area where they are) and I might buy a couple too. I’ve considered powerwall from Tesla but after some immense research on quality and cost saving I’ve come across a company called EcoFlow. Because I’m already planning on buying quite a few I was curious to see how many others might be looking into backup batteries with the possibility of sourcing logistics for group pricing. Open conversation. Thoughts?
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I looked into this after suffering some home damage due to lose of power in a storm and also just the general inconvenience of frequent power outages. I found batteries were just not cost competitive compared to an integrated natural gas generator if you want to be able to run air conditioning during a power outage. Which is what I want to be able to do since almost all the power outages I have experienced in my current home are due to summer thunderstorms. If all you need is to keep lights on and run a few appliances batteries start to make more sense. Although for that situation the cost of hooking up a power transfer system to the house is what is expensive rather than the battery (or small generator).
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I have a small solar system on my house and have been looking into energy storage. I’ll have to look into EcoFlow!
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I’ve been thinking about this as well and did full house solar but decided to wait on batteries to come down in price. I have a manual whole house generator for now. My inclination is to wait for either A) Batteries to drop in price or B) backfeed integrations from EV vehicles such as the Ford Lightning to become commonplace. Why buy/maintain an additional battery when you can lease a new one every few years and just purchase the home integration inverter that shouldn’t degrade as much with time.
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I’d consider it but have been waiting for prices to come down. Open to hearing what kind of pricing you’d be able to get, but I’d only really care to have 1.
Agreed, batteries just aren’t quite there yet.
We have a 13kW solar system and a Generac 24kW generator with auto transfer switch. Way more reliable than hoping that we still had some charge left in the batteries.
I have a generator too1 it’s cost effective. But doomsday proofing has crossed my mind. My goal is 100% self sustaining
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All of these portable batteries are terrible. Ecoflow, Bluetti, Jackery, etc. all have horrible round trip efficiencies. If I’m not mistaken the Ecoflows have about a 60% round trip efficiency at best. The legitimate backup battery storage options like DIY with separate inverters or a Tesla PW have over 90% efficiency. Plus, not sure whether some of these portable batteries even qualify for the 30% credit.
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That’s where I’m at if I ever even get a solar system. It’s extremely rare to have a power outage where I’m at so I don’t really think it would be too cost effective to buy a battery system.
I also can’t really make solar panels cost effective right now since Indiana changed from net metering to instantaneous metering.
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I find that batteries are a good option if you have solar because you have the ability to use them all the time. (Charge during the day, use the power at night.) But they are expensive and generators can run for much longer. We don’t lose power often, but the last 3 major storms over 5 years or so have resulted in power outages of roughly a week each time. You can run a generator for a week, a battery only gets you so far.
Server rack batteries are likely the most cost effective option and are rated for extremely high cycle counts.
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Get a 1k gallon propane tank as well for when the natural gas shuts off. That and 1m rounds of ammo will get you through the first week, and that’s 90% of the battle.
The last 10% is all about your beard, scurvy and dental issues.
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Got everything covered but battery lol
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