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Comment by je_bailey | Hacker News Reader

You missed an additional subset of users. I live in an old neighborhood that experiences power outages and fluctuations once or twice a year. This is fantastic and something I will be installing as soon as I can. So older neighborhoods, rural areas with inconsistent power supply. All of these potentially benefit from this.

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Living in a region with cold weather, this is the kind of situation I would like to solve too. The problem is that a generator still has benefits over a battery, it can be refilled (i.e. when you lose electricity for a longer period).

And is a fraction of the cost, best case, or about the same if you want one capable of powering your entire household load indefinitely. And if you have natural gas service, you don't need to refuel either.

I agree, but I guess that the generator have a no zero starting time. (Do you have o turn it on manually?) So the battery keeps the electricity for the meanwhile.

Also, the generators are noisier. Perhaps you can turn them off during the night and use only the battery while you are sleeping and the electricity consumption is smaller.

Having lived through Hurricane Sandy in NYC: don't assume you can get gas to fill your generator in a disaster situation. Solar panels paired with a battery aren't dependent on a supply chain (that itself needs energy).

Yes, getting energy from a sustainable source of energy is the best way, but assuming you only use it for power outages once or twice a year, I am not sure it is worth the investment. Especially if you expect it to last a day/few days (if you are self sufficient for a few days you'd better do it all year long).

I actually didn't miss it, I was simply pointing out types of users who don't benefit from it to counter the "beneficial to almost everyone" argument. I realize there are many types of people who will use this product and benefit immensely.

How is a power outage once or twice a year problematic? Did you mean once or twice a month?

(Just curious :)

When the power outages lasts more than a couple hours.

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