We are now into our third full day off the grid and I'm getting the swing of this. Today I turned off one of my inverters to slow the battery charging. This is keeping to solar running on the one inverter providing steady power to the home and charging the batteries.
I also told my family to start using electricity. With a 10kW limit on the batteries we can't go over that without the solar being on. If solar is producing then we can do solar + 10kW from the Powerwalls. This gives us around 17kW with one inverter. If full solar production happens then we max out the input to the Powerwalls (10kW) and production stops. Then we are back to just batteries and limited to 10kW. So I've got a hotplate running to distill water, oven going baking things, dishwasher running.... you know... Freaking my kids out because I'm always running around telling them to turn things off and here I am saying "hurry up and get something using electricity so we don't go battery only!"
This silly dance wouldn't be a problem if my batteries could output 20kW. So my next real goal is to get another couple of Powerwalls to bring my input/output capacity to 20kW. Then I can have full sun charging (15.7kW full production) and not worry if I'm only on battery.
I will say that I notice the lights flickering more now that I'm off the grid. Not horrible, but it does stand out as a thing so I have to wonder if it is damaging any of the electronics. Something I'm keeping an eye on and figured I'd at least mention it.
Edit: This is working and I'm pushing the line too!
I got REALLY close to tripping it all. Had the dryer, oven, stovetop, both A/C systems, a hotplate and dehumidifier all running. I had the dryer stopped. We are good.
Louis L'Amour, “To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers.
One who does not vote has no right to complain.”
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