Hacker News Reader

Comment by usaphp | Hacker News Reader

Correct me if I am wrong, it estimates 12,000$ for a single day of energy backup of your home? For 12,000$ I dont mind staying one day without electricity.

View on HN

If you generate more electricity than you use during the day, you all of a sudden don't have an electric bill... or a drastically reduced one.

The funny thing about solar... it's not constant. Half the day is night... then clouds/rain/etc. 24/hours of electricity is for those dry periods.

But my electric bill is like $30-40/month, Why would I want to shell out $12,000 for something that will become old tech in couple of years like the 1 powerwall.

30-40$ is probably a very small apartment. A house (2 levels) in Quebec during winter can go easily around 500$ because of the constant heating required.

But you won't get much solar electricity during winter in Quebec anyway would you?

Cooling a house during the summer in Texas can easily cost the same amount if not more, and you get a ton of sun during that time. The point is that for single family homes electricity does not usually cost $40/month.

But the price for the equal amount of power walls needed for a bigger house vs a small 1 bedroom raises too, according to the calculator on their site it will cost $30k+ to install it for 4 bedroom house.

Is it very common to heat a house using electricity in Quebec?

Where I live, nobody would do that - due to cost. More popular solutions are natural gas or water heat pumps.

It will take most people 20-30 years to recoup this in terms of an investment over wholesale energy costs at current rates. It is, for the present a gimmic.

That depends entirely on where you live.

My parents in Australia have almost paid back their 10Kw system, in less than 5 years.

You are wrong.

You can have multiple days. But normally you would use this to arbitrage electricity prices, especially if you don't have net metering.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com