dan emery
Joined: 11 Jan 2004
Posts: 6923
Location: Maine12/26/22 8:44 AM |
Christmas off the grid
Hope everyone is having a great Holiday.
I had a 2 1/2 day power outage ending about 4pm Christmas. I was away on a Christmas road trip when it started Friday morning, then came back Saturday when there was no projection of when it would be restored. I have solar panels and a Tesla Powerwall storage battery and Gateway, so I could see exactly what was going on with my phone app.
This was the first test of the storage battery as backup, and it worked great. It kept the house going (essential functions, not everything) the whole time, and got recharged with a bit of solar generation during the day. It doesn’t back up the heat pumps, which are electricity intensive, but does run the oil furnace and I could use the woodstove when I got home. Operation is seamless, I don’t think the dog-sitter even noticed the outage when it occurred.
I think this will handle a very high percentage of outages (it would run out on a long outage with no generation, say if the panels were covered with snow). But even the little generation we get in December was enough to keep it going
I’m pretty happy with how it works. And again, you can see everything, even remotely.
On a cycling note, I got a great set of Silca long handled Allen wrenches, and torx and other bits, from my nephew, all in a wood Breadwinner case!
Again, Happy Holidays!
|