I went the lease route, but I have an option to buyout my system in 5 years. The advantage of leasing is they replaced my entire 60 year old panel at no cost to me using state subsidies, saving me about $5k. They get most of the tax credits, but I'm still saving a ton on electricity.

15 years is definitely a tough sell, I'm not sure why more states don't give tax credits towards solar as it benefits an already overtaxed grid

 

Free market economy

 

a powerwall holds 13.5kwh. your car has 70+kwh. a powerwall costs $15K+install.
so to have a solid setup i'd say you need 4 powerwalls, that's $60K + install
great savings...

 

You would rarely charge more than 13 kW a night unless you wait for your battery to get down to 10 percent SoC. In most cases we are "topping off" nightly. BTW there are state and Federal tax credits on battery packs making them cheaper, and as time goes on, they will become cheaper as all technology does

 

You need to put 70 kwh into your battery every night in the same way you need to fill up your empty gas tank every night.

 

The battery packs are designed to store excess energy you generate and during brief periods such as nighttime, brownouts, or periods where the grid is being overtaxed you pull power from the packs. For extreme emergencies such as power outages, you would rely on a generator, in my case I would probably consider a natural gas generator because it can be directly hooked into our gas lines.

You also don't have to go with a Tesla wall, as there are other competitors in the market that offer battery storage

 

One of the reasons my payback period is so long and my electric bills are typically cheap is because I have a gas furnace, water heater and stove. My overall bill is higher but it’s split between the two.

 

That makes a lot of sense in your case

 

I have an acquaintance with a Tesla 3 and solar at home. He’s a physician so his income reach is more than that of an average person. If you can do solar, great and there are programs in CA that make solar more affordable.

People do seem to find wind power a viable source of electricity. I am skeptical on that. A short drive out to La Quinta brings you by a windmill farm with many windmills not turning. Some of the fans are on the ground. Some are missing blades. Hence, skepticism.

The electricity needs to be produced and it needs to come from somewhere. Some charge stations are powered by fossil fuels. Gasp. We had the all new vehicles will all be EVs by 2035 followed within days by an announcement that EV owners should not charge their cars as we were expecting excessive load on the existing grid and rolling blackouts were expected.

Since then, what has been done to bolster the grid? Nothing that’s been made public, so probably…nothing. The goals are lofty and probably achievable. I am a policy wonk by education and politicians usually aren’t. They like to put the cart before the horse. Seems like that’s the case in CA. We have one nuke plant in operation and it’s scheduled for closure. So my question is, how do we support a lot more EVs while simultaneously eliminating a source of electricity and not adding any energy producing capacity?

I am not anti EV. I work in the industry and EV adoption helps me careerwise, but so does pumping gas. We do use fossil fuels to supply power to some of our charge stations. Gasp.

 

I can tell you personally living in California and owning EV's since 2020 I've had ZERO issues charging. The strains on the grid that you mention only happen 3 or 4 times a year during intense heat waves where AC use is at its highest, which is usually between 3PM and 9PM. People mostly charge their cars after 9PM (usually between 12am and 4am) when grid use is at it's lowest and rates are at their cheapest...non peak hours. Charging your EV uses nowhere near the power my Central AC uses. In fact, my electricity usage is at it's highest June through September due to AC usage.

I also want to mention that my "off peak" power comes from San Jose Clean Energy (run by the City of San Jose), which generates most of its energy through renewable sources

 

Nice post Link13.
You said some things I had suspected and good to hear from someone with boots on the ground.

We need upgrades, it's inevitable.

Ev's or not, they know it's true so start spending the $$$ Billions they rake in and do something! Lol

 

We have water shortages sometimes in Florida during droughts.

They'll ask us not to water the lawn or wash cars.

 

your anecdotes looking BACKWARDS in time aren't relevant. the point is, what happens when there's triple the number of ev's being charged at night?

 

You are sorted and that’s good. My best bud is sorted too. He’s a multi millionaire though, so he has resources that many don’t.

The unaddressed point of my previous post is that we are putting additional load on a grid that cannot support the growing demand. Sure it may draw less to charge your EV than it takes to run your AC. Everyone in CA is going to run their A/C and perhaps I am being obtuse in not understanding how more demand on a grid that fails under existing demand is going to support more.

My work, we sort of ignore home charging in North America. We are with fleets. Delivery, impatient quarterbacks, you name it. How do we get juice to those boxes?

 

I agree with you, the grid needs much needed expansion. No arguments there because as more EV's hit the road, more power will be needed to power them