At that point, a small backup generator (or even just staying grid-tied as insurance) makes far more sense

Yeah, w/o grid fallback, I’d much rather aim for 98-99% w/ solar and have an alternate source to close gap, rather than aim for “five 9s” on solar+batt. It’d take a lot to talk me out of a multi-source approach.

> It's uncommon, but a wind generator can help a lot

It's uncommon for a reason. Wind generator capacity rises with the square of the rotor diameter. That means small-ish generators (let's say "small enough to be roof mountable without additional mechanical supports") are significantly below 1 kW of power. Seriously, the systems people by for their sailing yachts make around 50W from a nice breeze - enough for lights and to trickle charge the battery while docked, not nearly enough for a fridge.

Combine that with quite a number of moving parts, changing loads and exposure to weather, you get very short maintenance intervals and final lifetimes.

If you have any other option for power, its almost always economical to just use that.

The AMC White Mountain huts have been doing this for years. The croo don't tend to maintain the systems, so I've never gotten a sense for what their storage capacity, generating capacity, and loads look like, but from a visitor perspective, the system works well.

Reportedly, even the fairy stout wind turbines they use up there have short, brutal lives. I heard the story of a croo that had to lasso/tangle/jam the blades of theirs in a storm because it lost the ability to control its speed and the alternative was letting it overspeed and possibly tear itself apart. They aren't large in diameter, but at the speeds they turn even in normal conditions up there, catastrophic failure could be really bad.

Please note if your goal is minimizing carbon footprint, burning wood instead of other biomass is probably not a great idea [1].

[1] https://www.pfpi.net/carbon-emissions/

Full on certified passive house looks very silly with solar this cheap, and frankly the math used to figure out a lot of the requirements is basically faulty.

2025 Code minimum is pretty decent if it's actually complied with, and 'net zero' middle ground with triple glazing is a worthwhile upgrade.

If you wanna spend 2-3x more, yes. Otherwise solar or grid battery is cheaper.

you have personal hydropower? that sounds pretty cool

Woodgas would work as well

" but not the current generation chemistry batteries."

Check for "Saltwaterbatteries", they are starting to reach consumer markets and literally cannot burn as the energy is stored as ... salt water.

Yeah, I'm not saying it's a good idea. But you could do it if you wanted to.

LFP should be about as safe as other stuff people tend to store in their basements.

Even if it was a safer chemistry, I would still put it outside of my house, likely in a dedicated structure. Its a shit ton of energy potential regardless, and it can make maintenance and modification down the line way easier.

A sand battery would work[0] if you have the space ;)

https://polarnightenergy.com/news/worlds-largest-sand-batter...

Most grid-scale batteries that large will have bigger inverters (usually it'll be inverters that can dump that energy in 2-6 hours so 500-150 KW for 1 MWh of battery) and require cooling systems and such, but if you're putting that in your home then cooling will be negligible and the inverter will remain small. The batteries themselves are fairly compact, it's the support systems that get large.

Shipping containers should never be buried. They are not designed to tolerate forces pushing in on the sides and can collapse.

What's the degradation cycle on batteries that size?

If you're using daily, do you get... three? five years?

Looks like - https://cartroubleshooters.com/how-long-does-a-tesla-home-ba... - ten to fifteen years with a guarantee of 10 years at 70% from Tesla

We can roughly estimate lithium ion batteries as 500 watt-hours per liter. Which makes a million watt-hours 2000 liters, which is two cubic meters. Add in extra overhead and it's still not all that much.

A solar carport is on my wish list: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B0lCJ0cK6hg

Yes, going off the grid would be a waste of resources and somewhat anti-social. I calculated that I would need a minimum of a 300 kWh battery to fully bridge the dark days in winter. This is not sustainable. I would much rather see all my neighbours' electricity prices go down because of my energy input to the local grid. This would help to connect people and combat jealousy regarding the unfair distribution of available land and space.

Is electricity insanely expensive, or do californians use an insane amount of electricity? I just received my yearly bill in central europe, and $56k would pay for approximately 51 years, I'm having trouble reconciling the numbers.

EVs cost ~$2 to charge a day for an average amount of driving.

The cost for AC dwarfs the cost to charge an EV.

My bill was €316 bimonthly at €0.31/kWh before I put in panels. Last bill covering the two sunniest months I've ever seen in Western Europe was €100 exactly, of which in excess of €50 was the standing charge that is due regardless. The remaining ~€25/mo overage is the delta of our demand and the inverter's peak output. Next purchase will be more panels; another inverter would offer only marginal gains.

Fuck. This is what I get for posting on 3 hours of sleep. My hallucinated bullshit came out so close to actual that it looked correct enough.

3.2v nominal per cell, 305Ah capacity: .976kWh per each. Call it .98. Not 980Ah, but 0.980 kWh.

.98 * 22 = 21.56kWh total pack cap.

*0.6 = 12.936 kWh available before conversion losses

We burn about 11kWh daily, so there's about a day in a full battery. Spring/mid summer worked well, but lately we aren't managing to store enough to get through the night, so I will probably add another 10 panels (5s2p) once I can find a grand I don't need.

Tons on this channel https://www.youtube.com/@WillProwse