How to Approach Home Batteries if the New 30% Tax Credit Has Your Attention

Speaker 1: Behind just about every doorway and window and suburban facade is one thing. An increasing collection of things that need electricity. We're electrifying everything these days, not just our cars. We always had reliable power from the grid, but a lot of us feel like it's a little less reliable now. Solar's great except at night or on short winter days or when it's covered in snow. What's that missing piece? More and more of us are getting comfortable with the idea of putting battery storage into our homes. Notice I said storage and not battery backup. There's a key distinction there [00:00:30] that I want to tell you about. This house near San Francisco is getting batteries today. They're made by Generac, who you probably know more for generators. They're being installed by Rob Hecken, Doran's crew. Speaker 2: This particular cabinet will hold up to six of these battery modules. This Speaker 1: Is a battery module, right? Okay. This is where the actual storage gets done, correct? This is list [00:01:00] is battery, Correct. Okay. Speaker 2: Correct. Um, and it sits in here, um, the battery cabinet requires a minimum of three in order to operate. Okay. Uh, it will take a maximum of six. So each one is three kilowatt hours in storage. So you've got anywhere from a nine kilowatt hour storage device to 18 kilowatt Speaker 1: Hours. You talk about different numbers of batteries they can put in here in different capacity. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, what do people typically Speaker 2: Get when you ask about an average household? [00:01:30] There is no average household because you've got single people living in a home versus a family with five kids. Um, obviously the more people in the home, the larger the home, the more capacity you're going to need. Uh, four module system, which would be 12 kilowatt hours is probably about the average of what we see. Speaker 1: If you've installed solar on your roof, you're probably familiar with how many kilowatts of power it generates in full sun. The relationship between that number and your battery systems', kilowatt hours [00:02:00] of capacity isn't entirely direct, but it's there. Speaker 2: If you upsize the battery too much more than what the roof can support, you've got a battery cabinet that your solar will never fully Speaker 1: Charge. That's what I'm curious about. So let's, let's say I've got a cabinet much bigger than my solar panel array can fill. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, I don't have to just fill this with solar, Speaker 2: Right. If your solar can't fully charge the system, you can actually change some of the settings in the inverter and it will charge your batteries [00:02:30] directly from the grid. Speaker 1: This is where home battery strategy gets really interesting going far beyond the rare usage in a power outage to daily usage. Doing something called rate arbitrage, storing energy when it's cheap to use it from your batteries later when the grid's expensive. Speaker 2: So you pay a normal rate during the course of the day, but the utility company knows that everybody comes home at the end of the day, they go to uh, into the kitchen, they turn on all their lights, turn pool, turn on the, the tv, the ac, everything like that. So the majority of the usage is [00:03:00] actually between, you know, three and eight, four and nine. So depending on your utility company, they actually charge you a higher rate per kilowatt hour of usage during that time. They call it peak time. So most people not being home during the day, their solar system is actually producing more energy than the home needs. So without a battery or energy storage, that goes back to the utility company and the utility companies are only gonna pay you maybe 4 cents on the dollar, Speaker 1: Which is a fraction of what you pay to get grid power. Correct. [00:03:30] Correct. Speaker 2: So it's Speaker 1: Not a great equation to sell it back. Speaker 2: Right. And and a lot of people, you know, oversized their solar thinking that, Oh, I'm gonna get a check from the, you know, utility company <laugh>. It doesn't work Speaker 1: That way. Haven't seen one online yet. Speaker 2: No. Right. Right. So, but instead of sending that excess electricity back to the grid, have a battery or an energy store system here, store that here on site and then later on in the afternoon, uh, say when it's four o'clock, five o'clock, your usage is the highest and instead of paying that, you know, upwards of 45, [00:04:00] 50 cents per kilowatt hour during peak hours, you can pull from your batteries for free. This Speaker 1: Was so my free storage, I grabbed from the roof Absolutely. When I didn't need it. Right. That's how you pencil out the earn back on the cost of battery storage. Since the piece of mind you get during a blackout is great, but it's hard to put a value on it. Now look, the first word in battery backup or battery storage is battery. So it's natural to obsess on the batteries, but as important is how this is [00:04:30] interconnected to your home. Not as sexy as a bunch of new tech batteries, but as a huge impact on what all of this does for you day to day. Speaker 2: Now in the, in the event of a power outage, right, the utility goes down. Yeah. Speaker 1: Right here. Speaker 2: Right. The brains sense it, they know what's going on and they send a signal to the battery, which we just saw in the [00:05:00] garage and that will kick in and it powers a circuit which comes around to this protected loads panel here. Speaker 1: These are my backed up Speaker 2: Loads. These are the my backed Speaker 1: Up circuits. Speaker 2: Correct? Speaker 1: Correct. So for example, this homeowner chosen to back up or protect what, Speaker 2: Uh, what we refer to as essential loads, the refrigerator and freezer. Right. Keep your food cold and fresh and safe. Um, probably some lights and outlets throughout the home. We're gonna keep your internet on so that you can communicate and see what's going on. So we're gonna take those essential loads, typically in [00:05:30] most cases about four circuits worth. Okay. And those will be relocated out of the main service panel into this protected loads. Speaker 1: Okay. Now they're tied into this whole system, Correct. Where they can quickly be moved over to battery. Correct. And just to be clear here, this is a home that does not have a generator. This is all being done with solar battery and interconnect to the grid. Correct. Interesting. If you wanna spend the money, you can back up your entire house with batteries. It's just a matter of how much money you want to throw at the problem. And if you have [00:06:00] enough solar capacity on your roof to recharge those batteries once they're depleted, if the grid is still down. Speaker 2: In fact, that's probably half of the systems that we're installing now are actually what they refer to as whole home backups. It sets a priority. So certain, certain loads like, uh, like if you had a well pump, uh, or, or uh, you know, refrigeration and things like that, those are more important. So those get a higher priority. Speaker 1: Okay, that's interesting. So I'm not having to make an all or nothing decision. Correct. I can say I want these to [00:06:30] be on the list, but here's the order of preference, right? Right. Speaker 2: This Speaker 1: Is all a homeowner choice, right? Absolutely. I say, Hey, I do want my pool running and forget the lights if I'm crazy. Sure you Speaker 2: Can do it. Absolutely it and we can e even take it a step further with Generac in that we'll be able to, uh, connect this soon with their generators. It senses what loads you have on and you want to keep on. If it is a low enough load, it knows that the battery can take care of it. If [00:07:00] the load becomes too much that the batteries can't do it, it will turn the batteries off, set them to be charging, turns the generator on. Now you've got all the power you need to run whatever you want in your house. Maybe your air conditioners later on the afternoon evening don't need the air condition, air conditioners anymore. It senses that the load has decreased, shuts the generator off, turns the batteries back on. Speaker 3: Technology wise, batteries and generators are definitely different, right? But [00:07:30] what's very similar is the need to have backup power. If customers wanna run larger loads like a a three ton, 4, 5, 10 AC unit, they have a really large well pump lithium batteries can make that happen. But we're getting to a lot of batteries and batteries are, are fairly expensive and so we can offer that flexibility because we don't know where our energy grid's gonna be in the next 10 years. Right. A lot's changed already. There's been a massive impact that EVs have had on our grid. Now to the homeowner, they might see that, hey, when the power goes [00:08:00] out, I'm not able to go to work or I'm not able to go to the store. That's where the power cell system would definitely help out. Now you don't wanna charge your whole battery cuz you got a 40 kilo hour battery into your car and usually an 18 kilo battery on your house. So you're gonna drain the system fairly quickly, but it will get you that, just that enough energy to get you where you need to be. Speaker 1: Much as with an EV or Home Solar, you should pay close attention to the warranty and the performance guarantee of any home battery system. Now they [00:08:30] all seem to have a 10 year warranty, which by the way is much shorter than most solar panels. But they also have widely varying performance guarantees. Generac guarantees their batteries for 10 years or 7.56 megawatt hours of power throughput or delivery. It's kind of how car makers do both year and mileage caps. Tesla does 10 years and also promises 70% battery capacity at that point. End phase mixes their 10 year guarantee with 7,300 full discharge [00:09:00] cycles and an 80% battery capacity guarantee. Unfortunately, these different warranty metrics make apples to apple's. Comparisons trickier than with solar panels. Look to be sure installing home battery storage is a bit of a masterclass compared to installing rooftop solar, which is relatively simple compared to this. But if you've already done rooftop solar, you already have most of the skills to understand home battery storage and also the more nuanced, interesting ways you can use it. Another [00:09:30] key point to bear in mind is quite recently the buy the administration has kicked off a new era of regulations that will allow a 30% federal tax credit for a new solar installation, a new battery installation, or for both of them. That can be quite an enticement.