How we power our home with our own solar energy
Over the last year, our home was 96% self powered. This means that the energy used for heating, cooling, water heating, running appliances, and 30% of car charging (we also charge at work and on the road) is directly produced by ourselves almost all the time, instead of coming from the grid. To be clear: we are not talking about comparing our yearly energy production to our yearly energy consumption, we are talking about constantly powering our home (night and day) with our own energy.
Our primary goal was to reduce carbon emissions coming from our residential energy consumption, our secondary goal was to save money in the long run.
We happen to live in a place where it's sunny most days of the year. This means abundant solar power available for everyone to harvest for free.
Because the sun doesn’t shine at night, batteries were essential to achieve our goal. But even if you only consider the economics, today’s net metering energy contracts (e.g. NEM 3) are designed to incentivise installing batteries. The plus of batteries is that also you won't notice grid power outages anymore (and you'll be the only house in the neighborhood with lights when they happen)
