We live in ‘the sticks’ with lots of trees (N GA) and most of the electrical distribution is aerial- both on poles and the drops to homes. So when we get widespread storm damage with outages it can take a while for our EMC to fully clear and restore the lines.
Longest outage has been 6 days. Couple of times 3 days.
Most outages are less than 8 hours.
We barely notice.
You spoke of catastrophic damage. If the damage to our home is “catastrophic” there is a good chance we won’t be in it or bigger issues than solar power will be in play.
FWIW, we also have two dual-fuel portable generators as back ups and for projects around the property. We’re good on ensuring power.
Re longevity: as a solar user, you’re likely aware a panel installation is good for ~25 years, then loss of production efficiency and other deterioration point to a refresh cycle. So yeah, there’s money involved- for re-roofing and new solar components. Everything residential has an anticipated end of life.
We have solar NOT because it’s some magic money saver. Rather we have it as a backup and a means of flat-rating about 80% (on a good year) of our power costs. Making money selling power back or zero cost electricity is an internet myth/lie. Solar is a deliberate investment made for reliability/resilience and predictable costs.
I started the solar journey long before it was chic. Have had hits (the passive solar water heater paid for itself in two years) and misses (solar pool heater blew off in a tropical storm). The batteries didn’t last nearly as long as expected. Color me jaded with the solar experience.
Amen to your solar assessment.
Our electric producers went through the customer screaming phase. Those with solar systems who bought into the scam of selling power back to utilities felt jilted expecting retail returns for their useless daytime home generated power.
Economics quickly stopped the demands of those buying solar for the wrong reasons. The utilities were not about to go broke buying power that was generally not needed.
Solar ain’t cheap and one definitely needs to buy because they can afford it and are willing to accept the additional work associated with those systems. Not to mention living where it doesn’t snow and where there is plenty of daylight in southern regions. Great for RV’s in other locations.
What’s battery life (as in years to replacement?) I use a lot of batteries of all chemistries for a lot of things (no cars or house-capacity solar installs tho’), and I’m a lot more careful than most people about charge cycles, using good chargers, and so on (my wife thinks I’m a nut about it): I’m still not happy about the reliability of how many charge / discharge cycles I get. Even within a good brand, model and size, I find some batteries will make their charge cycles rating, and some won’t, with fairly substantial percentages of severe failure (high internal resistance, capacity drops to under 50% of rating, or complete failure / won’t charge).
Then the 2nd question is backup time off the batteries - where you’d have a major advantage over me (warmer winters — our biggest threat of outages over 24 hours is ice storms, which often come with significant sleet, too.)
I’m still considering solar as the roof needs replacement — normally I’d do most of the work myself. My SE exposure is terrible (big trees that provide a lot of cooling shade in summer) but my SW exposure is pretty good. Our “practical” (and larger) roof section faces WNW.
Where I’d come up with the $$ is a huge problem, tho’, and I’m ethically opposed to gov’t subsidies of this sort.