discussion This is as close.

[gingerbee]

This reminded me of something I forgot to touch on. With whole home solar that is grid tied, power goes out on the grid you loose power too. Doesn't matter if your in the middle of the summer at noon etc. If you have a whole home battery system you can bypass this limitation, without the whole home battery system you are stuck with that limitation. There might be some exceptions with exclusive interlocks but talking to a solar expert would be recommended if your trying to use an interlock approach without the whole home battery system.

Whole home surge protector would be a really good idea. Your probably paying an electrician more in labor to install it that the actual hardware cost.

I am wary of solar experts and solar companies, as several of my neighbours have solar and none are very happy with what they got for their money. To be honest, I was shocked at how much some of them paid for a pretty basic solar setup. My suggestion would be to find an electrician who also does solar hookups, but is also willing to use your own gear I.E panels/batteries. Many of these solar companies love to jack the price up on panels/batteries because they will tell you things like "we will work out the perfect angle for your panels." This is not hard to do and is a diy friendly project; there are many online tools to help with this. ( just to be clear, I don't think every solar company out there is bad, far too many stories of paying triple the price kind of thing )

Yup, labour is the high cost, but if you get the right unit they are guaranteed for life, if it blows, they put a new unit in.


There is a 3rd option for whole-home batteries or solar now, EcoFlow/Anker and Bluetti now have very diy setups you can do, with a little help from an electrician, also a plus is they are moduler system that can be moved or added to over time. not cheap compared to diy, but cheaper than a solar installation company lol

I spent the last 2 years going over anything and everything solar. We have been considering adding it to our home. Generator+hookup was the cheapest and fastest home backup for our needs and will hold us over till we decide what we want to do, my electrician is biting at the bit for me to do it, cause I want to do a off grid system, no more power bills and he never gets to do those in cities lol.

The great thing is prices have really come down, no matter what route people choose.

TO THE TOPIC AT HAND, lol

Just get yourself some of the newer ecoflows with 20 or 10 ms switch over, for your important stuff, if you want to keep the power on for some devices when the juice is off, get bigger units. I am very happy with my ecoflows

 

[Izerous]

there are a lot of solar companies that popped up over the last 5 years or so. I specifically chose a company that had been around a lot longer (even if they were not the cheapest). I suggested someone a little more versed in solar just because there are some extra around things like external breaker boxes, exclusive disconnects and other things that your average journeyman doesn't know about. Also depending on where you are your average Journeyman isn't even allowed to do it, permits have to all be pulled by a master electrician (Alberta for example). Otherwise a friend and I would have done our houses ourselves quite a few years ago.

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Generator + Hookup + Ecoflows does seems like a practical immediate solution. The time it takes to do the permits and install can take a while and if your expecting more outages in the very immediate future that would buy you a lot of time due to the comparative simplicity.