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Comment by ag56 | Hacker News Reader

Thanks. But even at $80k it’s a no brainer. The hybrid solution I vetoed came in at $130k!

EDIT: To expand on that, only about $40k was batteries. After an initial period would fall back to (large) generator and only certain areas of house powered. I’d have to check the math, but an E F150 with a much smaller generator would be both cheaper and power the whole house indefinitely.

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It depends on your use case. If your use case is emergency backup power, then yeah the truck is the hands down winner. But if your use case is to load shift to minimize costs then buying a slightly smaller fixed location (ie: powerwall) battery bank which is always able to be on-line will likely make more sense, since once you drive the truck somewhere it's no longer attached to the house.

It depends on how your electricity generation, distribution, and consumption works for your own location.

But also, holy cow! $130k in powerwalls is a LOT of powerwall!

Natural gas and/or propane is the best option for my home. Solar installation + battery is just insanely expensive compared to gas (6x at a minimum) and where I live offers far less reliability.

I agree. Plus any prolonged power outage (multi days) is likely to be area wide which means that topping up an F150 from a fast charger before dark and those are likely to be heavilly over subscribed (or out of action) in the local area.

With the Powerwall option you could top up your F150 at home then range further to find a working fast charger thats within the calculated power budget.

You'll need to consider that the truck uses a different battery chemistry than home battery backup solutions intended for a different use case. The truck isn't intended to power your entire home and you'll likely have to use a manual disconnect from the grid.

Also it sounds like you'd still need solar panels and a backup generator.

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