I need to look into emergency electricity again; not going to get panels & battery for the house any time soon (or at least, not this year) but feels like being more prepared would be sensible just in case a similar Tam/Gabrielle hits Hawke's Bay again.
this post was submitted on 16 Apr 2025
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We got solar somewhat recently. You can often get cheap finance through your bank if you have a mortgage, $10k should be enough for a few panels. While a battery would be good for resilience, it's a significant cost that Consumer NZ reckons doesn't pay for itself and is only worth doing if you are looking for that protection from power cuts. It does seem like that's what you want, but you can add a battery later, and if you lose power for a long time then having power during the day is still better than none at all.
One thing that surprised me was how little power the house battery stores. As the nights get longer, we are often left without much power in the battery come morning. And if the heating is on we often don't make it through and it starts pulling from the grid.
The battery is about 13KWh and we have a Leaf EV that's maybe 25 or 30Kwh, so if you charge overnight then it just drains the whole battery.
Yeah I am tempted to wait a bit for battery technology to change to a point where the cost per Kwh for storage has become as attractive as the solar generation improvements did. I think the volume of battery will always be a factor but some of the new research into Sodium Ion look pretty interesting.
Yeah I am hoping the rush on EVs continues and the big bucks keep being put into battery research. I am really tempted to get a second battery, but then I remember the battery alone costs a good $10-15k depending on model., I reckon in 5 years or so when I'm hoping capacities have doubled (so getting one more will triple our current capacity).
It's hard watching the solar output get capped because the battery is full and you can only provide 5KW to the grid on single phase power systems.
Do you even get enough for putting power on the grid to make the setup of all that worthwhile?
Through the middle of the day we are hitting the export cap most days, but we also try to turn on the dishwasher or charge the car at that time because it's better to use the power than sell to the grid and buy it back later.
We've only had it through the summer so I'm curious what the winter will be like.
We get 20c per KWh at a fixed rate, which is much better than some companies that do 10c or less or some don't pay you at all. We are with SolarEdge, a specialist electricity company that only work with people who have solar or other renewable power (e.g. wind). Apparently they can't do it in all areas, though.
All in all it will be interesting to pull out a spread sheet after a year and try to work out whether it's been financially worth it.