Solar in California in 2024

I recently spec’ed out a solar system. It’s not installed yet, but the contract is signed.

Our situation is:

• ~16 kWh daily consumption
  • Mostly electric appliances
  • Gas furnace
  • 1 EV

I spent a lot of time thinking about the design, and the key principles were:

• Solve today’s problems
• Maximize future optionality
• Scale horizontally, not vertically

In California in 2024, you need a battery today since you’ll be on NEM 3.0, and it doesn’t pencil out without a battery. On the other hand, batteries will easily dominate the cost of a new installation. On the third hand, the energy storage landscape is changing extremely rapidly.

• Battery chemistry improving rapidly over time
• Evolving standards like V2H would unlock huge kWh of stranded storage
• Emerging trend of “appliances with batteries”

So I opted for “just enough” battery today and the end result is:

• 13.5 kWh battery (FranklinWH, Franklin aGate + optional generator module)
• an SS2-50 generator inlet port
• Span smart panel
• Span Drive (EV charger)
• Backup by Biolite

The Franklin system is price competitive with the Tesla PW3, but the key feature to me was the optional native support to connect a generator. Bonus of not funding that fascist pig fucker Elon Musk.

The SS2-50 is IMO the best way to preserve optionality. Since it’s a standard, you can do things like hook up a “battery generator” to it, or even a car, if your vehicle supports it. You could use your external power source as a true emergency backup, or just as a way to add more storage to your system without having to get an electrician to do any expensive rewiring of stuff.

• https://youtu.be/WQljBFxqp4k?t=154 is the Anker F3800, which is far cheaper and more expandable than a typical Franklin / Enphase / Tesla whole house battery.
• https://youtu.be/hGaftao5E7U?t=54 is a Chevy EV Silverado which has a massive 200 kWh battery which is a literal order of magnitude larger than the Franklin.

The Span is important for my home, since we are stuck with 125A service, and having software configurable load-shedding seems useful to keep overall load within limits. Better yet, it also integrates with the Franklin ecosystem and the Span Drive, so that you can do things like, “only charge the EV after I’m done charging the home battery”. The Drive doesn’t support V2H but that’s why the generator inlet is so key. We’re partially insulated from the standards evolving.

Last is the Backup by Biolite. Although this device isn’t shipping yet, I’m a backer on Kickstarter. I opted for the 3 kWh version to power my fridge. It’s cheaper $ / kWh vs the FranklinWH and allows me to underspec the house battery by 3 kWh. Also, it embodies the idea of horizontal scaling rather than vertical scaling.

This is all stuff that is under contract.

But also, there are two other appliances I’m strongly considering for the future.

• Impulse induction cooktop
• Harvest HVAC

They both implement the horizontal scaling idea, by bringing their own energy storage, and again, allow me to continue growing the overall storage capacity without too much additional, expensive, electrician work.

I hope to have real world usage data in a few months and will update here