Time for some solar + battery power for the new house. I’m looking to put as much solar as I can fit, and enough battery capacity for my typical peak load on the generator panels.

Looking at load, my typical usage on the ‘generator’ panel, I’m running a peak of around 13-14kw, an idle of ~4 (will be higher in the summer). The other set of non gen panels has larger peaks, but lower averages since it has more non essential things on it.

In terms of amperage and balance, the Gen panel is peaking at ~60 amps on the A-side and 40-45 on the B-Side. The third graph is the differential, which is less than 20A all the time. (Neutral current). That makes a difference in off-grid running because the autotransformer is neutral limited.

4th graph is a typical evening load, which peaked at 13kw on the gen side. My average power usage each month is around 8MWh, or 96MWh/yr. All of this doesn’t include the 200 amp dedicated TOU service for Tesla charging.

I have narrowed it down to three choices:

(1) An Enphase system, with the smart switch, 3x Encharge-10 10kWh battery systems, and 20kWs of panels. The Encharge-10 systems can do 3.8kw each, so 3 of them could deliver 11kw from battery, plus the additional 20kw from solar, and of course generator backup from there.

(2) A Tesla system with their panels and 3 Powerwalls. That would give my 3*13.5=40kWh of storage, and 15 kw of power delivery. Panels are however DC with a DC inverter.

(3) I roll my own using the Victron Battery+Solar, add Solar, and build batteries.

I am leaning towards #1 primarily because the Tesla setup does not allow generator power to charge the batteries, and doesn’t really do a mix of generator, battery, and solar.

The Tesla batteries are overall a bit cheaper, as 3 powerwalls would be 23,000 or so with the supporting stuff, while 3 of the Encharge-10s would be about 28k.

Of course I need to figure out how to fit 60 panels on the roof. 😉

Comments and suggestions welcome of course. 😉